On November 24, 2024, Romanian voters sent two outsider politicians—one being the nationalist provocateur Călin Georgescu—into a Presidential run-off, scheduled for December 8. Yet days before the second round, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the election results based on a report from the country’s intelligence community. Their findings implied that Russia was behind a massive disinformation campaign via TikTok. Georgescu and his supporters argue that the Court made a political ruling, fearful that his ascension to the presidency would undermine Romania’s pro-Brussels orientation. His opponents argue that maligning foreign influence via powerful tech platforms is such a corruption of the process that invalidation is necessary. As is often the case, the truth might be somewhere in the middle.

　　Regardless, how EU member states and Brussels react stands to set precedents. What will qualify as Russian foreign electoral interference within the European Union? And what is to be done about the likes of TikTok and other such services when weaponized by Moscow or other malign actors? And how can the West take countermeasures while firmly adhering to liberal democratic principles?

　　These questions have important implications for American foreign policy. The US has an interest in good governance for a country that has evolved into a supportive NATO partner. Romania’s defense expenditure has surged by 53 percent since 2023, with a projected cumulative spending of $46.3B for 2025–29. Romania now allocates over 3 percent of its GDP to defense spending and has the second largest military on NATO’s eastern flank (after Poland) and a long-term plan for hardware modernization (2023 saw Bucharest retire its last MiG jet and the Romanian Air Force now flies mostly US-made F-16s). Bucharest has also positioned itself as a key American partner on the Black Sea, allowing the US to reduce its reliance in the area on Turkey, a complicated ally with interests that do not always align with America’s. How Bucharest handles intelligence sharing, overtures from Russia and China, and domestic corruption (particularly in military procurements) is of vital interest to Washington.

　　Moreover, Romania shares a 400-mile border with Ukraine and has registered more Russian military drones flying over or crashing into its territory than any other NATO state. While there are traditional tensions between Ukraine and Romania, those have been put on hold as Bucharest has sent not only personnel carriers and rocket launchers but also howitzers, 122mm and 152mm shells, grenade launchers, machine guns, and much more. In short, constitutional unrest in Romania directly affects American interests in Eastern Europe.

　　TikTok’s Role

　　The first-round election results were almost immediately plunged into dispute. Days after the vote, upon exiting a meeting of the Supreme Council of National Defense, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis triggered the crisis by citing soon-to-be declassified intelligence reports that “a presidential candidate” had benefited from “massive exposure due to preferential treatment granted by the TikTok platform.” The videos in question were posted by local influencers, who were supported by armies of bots that gamed the TikTok algorithms to expand audience reach. Later, the unclassified intelligence revealed a complicated network of payments to these influencers. The videos themselves were often unremarkable. In an election year that featured Indian premier Narendra Modi “performing” in viral, AI-generated pop music videos, most of Georgescu’s videos were re-posts of clips from talk show panels and think tank events.

　　Meanwhile, the Romanian Constitutional Court ordered a recount, prompted by unrelated complaints against the other candidate, center-right reformist Elena-Valerica Lasconi. The recount showed no technical flaws or fraud in the administration of the election, and on December 2, the Constitutional Court unanimously affirmed the electoral outcome.

　　Blaming the popularity of this unlikely messenger on an algorithm or a Russian bogeyman allows elites to sidestep questions of their own failures.

　　But on December 4, the much-anticipated Romanian intelligence service reports were at last released, revealing a pattern of massive cyber-attacks and well-funded disinformation campaigns by an unnamed “state actor” implicating Russia.

　　Then on December 6—two days before the scheduled run-off—the Constitutional Court plunged Romanian politics into crisis when it reversed course and threw out the election results on the basis of these declassified intelligence documents.

　　Before the annulment, the Romanian Constitutional Court appears to have sent a message to Lasconi suggesting that she file the necessary appeal for annulment; Lasconi seems to have calculated that her chances of winning the December 8 election had been strengthened and so declined to file. At that point, the Court self-referred the case, drawing further criticism from civil society and Western press. Even Lasconi, confident in her likelihood of beating Gorgescu, accused the Court of intrusion in the democratic process.

　　The Annulment

　　Electoral annulments are ordinarily driven by procedural and administrative failings and/or fraud. Decision No. 32 of the Constitutional Court of Romania marks a shift with its condemnation of platform manipulation and disinformation which, turbocharged by AI, corrupted the electoral process and created a breach of transparency, violating “the essential principles of democratic elections.” In its decision, the Court described a voter’s “right to obtain correct information about candidates.” The question is open whether this mandates further restrictions on social platforms, or if this saddles a neutral government actor, like the election management body, with compiling candidate statements and distributing them widely, as many US states do. It also raises the question many democracies are currently confronting: how can a country repel misinformation campaigns while respecting free speech?

　　The crisis is further complicated by the fact that the actual impact of the social media campaigns on the November 24 election is unknown and possibly unknowable. Moreover, many of the allegations in the declassified documents are not backed by evidence standards under a prosecutorial case.

　　US media coverage of this election and the annulment focused on the drama of TikTok algorithms and conniving Russians. But there is another piece of the Court’s decision that is just as important: namely that “the electoral process regarding the election of the President of Romania was flawed throughout its duration and at all stages by multiple irregularities and violations of electoral legislation,” and particularly that the presidential campaign featured serious violations of campaign finance law (paragraphs 5 and 18). This brought the Court back to the use of annulment in situations involving mismanagement or fraud and is integral to the Court’s full decision.

　　To wit, Georgescu’s official declarations to Romania’s Permanent Electoral Authority (PEC) reported that his campaign had spent a grand total of nothing. While Georgescu’s public appearances were minimal, his online presence across multiple platforms was enormous; his own TikTok account alone had 3.7 million likes, 274,000 followers, and nearly 200 million views in the last two months of the campaign. Both Romanian campaign law and TikTok terms of reference require campaign videos to be labeled as such. Georgescu’s seldom were—and it’s unclear why he was never sanctioned for it. His campaign was also active on Facebook and YouTube, with support from networks on Telegram and Discord—all expensive activities to maintain for the duration of a campaign. The presence of these extensive social media campaigns was sufficient evidence for campaign finance violations, separate from any distorting effects these efforts may have had on voters.

　　The Court was careful to frame its decision within Constitutional and EU legal frameworks, and the violations of Romanian campaign finance law seem real enough. On the other hand, the Court’s focus on voter “rights” to “obtain correct information” creates more questions than answers.

　　But ultimately the Court’s standing is shaky at best and created whole-cloth at worst. The Constitutional Court acted because other Romanian institutions did not—which instantly shifted the Court into a political frame. The Council of National Defense—made up of the President, Prime Minister, and several security Ministers—appeared uncoordinated and reluctant to engage with the crisis. The national media regulator complained to TikTok, which said it had removed content—content that nonetheless remained visible for the duration of the campaign. The PEC was unresponsive to campaign finance filings and further lacked the capacity to oversee online advertising expenditures. Providing only a poor band-aid, the PEC only referred campaign finance violations to the Romanian tax authority in mid-December.

　　Inevitably, the dispute caught the attention of Brussels and Washington.

　　Never Waste a Crisis

　　Washington responded by firmly implicating Russian interference. The allegation of Kremlin malfeasance so compelled the European Commission to investigate TikTok for a third time under the EU’s 2023 Digital Services Act (DSA). Intended to protect EU citizens’ right to privacy inter alia, the law comprises a hefty set of social platform regulations enforced by potential levies on its transgressors. In tandem, some European lawmakers demanded that TikTok’s CEO appear before the European Parliament to qualify his firm’s methods of disinformation prevention.

　　The drivers of this crisis are all too common. Călin Georgescu tapped into the gulf between the rural disaffected and urban elites, popular anger over corruption, the highest inflation rate in the EU, and voter fatigue with the two main parties—the Social Democrats and the National Liberals—which have dominated Romanian politics since the 1990s. He is a product of “covid politics” and the public distrust that sprang to life in the wake of state overreach during the pandemic. Many of Georgescu’s TikTok videos were simply clips of interviews he gave on state television. These resonated with voters, particularly with young voters. His being a Moscow puppet matters to Washington—but not to non-elite Romanian voters who want to flip off Bucharest and its governance failures.

　　There is no need to publicly embarrass Romanian institutions or marginalize Romanian voters who are angry.

　　Some analysis has been breathless about the “sophistication” of Russia’s influence operations in Romania. The technical specs on the widespread hacking attempts certainly indicate some serious firepower—computer systems from over 30 countries used advanced anonymization methods to launch cyber-attacks in an attempt to access state IT systems. But the “meat” of the influence operation was unremarkable: replays of an older man in a suit complaining on a stage were not on my 2024 bingo card of TikTok-disinformation-wizardry.

　　Blaming the popularity of this unlikely messenger on an algorithm or a Russian bogeyman allows elites to sidestep questions of their own failures which will only snowball future protest votes. And deploying the EU’s new social media rules in a way that targets non-elite voters will only fuel accusations that the DSA is a tool for establishment political control.

　　Much of this drama could have been avoided if Romanian authorities had simply enforced their own campaign finance laws during the election—as, for instance, when Georgescu did not even try to make his filing look authentic. He literally declared a zero, as if he were mocking the incontinence of Bucharest elites. Had the relevant electoral authorities invalidated Gorgescu’s campaign then and there, the present morass may well have been avoided.

　　What’s Next

　　Washington jumped at this opportunity to highlight Russian malfeasance. But there is no shortage of such opportunities. Seizing it here risks framing Washington as the European establishment’s bully. With the pro-US Lasconi likely to emerge as the next President, we should not forget that she, too, is an outsider with a strong anti-corruption message. There is no need to publicly embarrass Romanian institutions or marginalize Romanian voters who are angry. Rather, there is a real opportunity for Washington to engage diplomatically behind the scenes to encourage Bucharest to improve governance capacity and tackle corruption.

　　Bucharest has given us yet another exhibit of elite panic and overreach, but with the rescheduling of the two-round presidential election on May 4 and 18, they have an opportunity to redeem themselves. Quiet yet firm encouragement from Washington can supplement the pressure brought to bear on Bucharest by angry Romanian voters; pressed between a rock and a hard place, the Romanian establishment might rediscover the joys of reform and good governance. If successful, both will improve the economic and social lives of Romanians outside of Bucharest, protect the $3B of foreign direct investment that American businesses have in the country, and ensure that Romania is a stable, high-capacity military partner in Europe and the Black Sea region.