The annulment of Romania's presidential election by the Constitutional Court

On Friday 6 December 2024 the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the entire presidential electoral process and ordered it to restart from the beginning. The decision was unanimous, final and binding. The run-off between Călin Georgescu and Elena Lasconi had been set for Sunday 8 December, and Romanians abroad had begun voting that same Friday[1]. The first round of 24 November had given Georgescu 22.94% of the vote and Lasconi 19.18%, with the Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu, third at 19.15%, 2,740 votes behind her. Turnout was 52.55%[2]. A Member State of the Union has cancelled a national election that was already under way. We write about it because the generation that votes on TikTok is ours.

What the court did and on what basis

The Court acted under Article 146(f) of the Constitution, which gives it the task of ensuring that the procedure for electing the President is followed and of confirming the result, and under Article 142(1), which makes it the guarantor of the supremacy of the Constitution. It annulled the Government Decisions 756/2024 and 1061/2024 that had set the election date and calendar[1]. The relevant electoral statute allows annulment where fraud affected the ranking of the candidates for the second round, and it does not define fraud[3].

The sequence matters. On 29 November the Court postponed a decision on a request to annul the first round and ordered a recount. On 2 December, by Ruling 31, it validated the first round and found no fraud. It did not ask for classified material. On 4 December the Supreme Council of National Defence declassified intelligence on illegal interference in favour of Georgescu. On 5 December the Court said that new complaints would be examined only after the second round. On 6 December, by Ruling 32, it annulled the whole process on its own general powers, without ruling on those complaints[3]. Professor Bianca Selejan-Gutan, who teaches constitutional law at Sibiu, calls the decision "extreme and deeply concerning" for a state governed by the rule of law, and she notes that the Court's earlier exclusion of a candidate already relied on an innovative reading of its powers that a dissenting judge contested[3].

The declassified documents describe about 25,000 TikTok accounts that promoted Georgescu. About 800 of them had almost no activity until 11 November, when, in the words of the intelligence service, the whole network was activated at full capacity, thirteen days before the first round. Georgescu had declared to the electoral authorities that he spent nothing on his campaign. The service also counted more than 85,000 cyberattacks on election systems through election day and the night after[4]. The Council described Romania as the target of an aggressive hybrid Russian action[5].

The reactions were as sharp as the ruling. Georgescu called it an official coup. Lasconi, who would have faced him and who stood to gain from a clean contest, said the decision was "illegal, amoral" and crushed the essence of democracy. President Klaus Iohannis said he would remain in office until a successor takes the oath, although his term ends on 21 December[5]. Prime Minister Ciolacu called the annulment "the only correct solution"[1].

What the Union has done and what it lacks

The Commission acted the day before the Court. On 5 December it issued a retention order to TikTok under the Digital Services Act. The order requires the platform to freeze and retain data on actual or foreseeable systemic risks to electoral processes and civic discourse in the Union, and on possible breaches of its ban on political advertising. It covers all national elections, including the German election due in February, and runs until 31 March 2025. The Commission stressed that it has not found a breach. Henna Virkkunen, the Commissioner responsible, said the order should "help investigators to establish the facts"[6].

That is the right first step and a small one. The Digital Services Act gives the Commission power to demand data, to open proceedings and to fine a very large platform. It gives no one the power to decide what happens to a manipulated election. That decision stayed with a national court, which took it in two days on a reasoning that its own country's constitutional scholars find hard to ground. The Union has a rule for the platform and no rule for the vote.

We draw two conclusions. The first is that the Romanian intelligence described a method. Dormant accounts, a synchronised activation two weeks before polling day and undeclared spending are the ordinary tools of paid influence. A platform that monitors its own systemic risks, as the Act requires, can see such a pattern before a national security council has to declassify it. The retention order will tell whether TikTok saw it.

The second conclusion is harder. A court that annuls an election to protect it takes a decision that the voters it protects cannot verify. Lasconi's reaction shows the cost: the candidate who lost most from the manipulation rejected the remedy. A democracy repairs a manipulated election by repeating it under clean rules, and Romania has not yet written them.

What we recommend

The Romanian Government should set the new election date only after Parliament has amended the electoral law to define fraud, to require real-time declaration of paid online promotion and to give the Central Electoral Bureau power to order a platform to label or remove undeclared political content during the campaign. The Court should publish the full reasoning of Ruling 32 before the new campaign opens, so that every candidate knows the standard that will apply. The Commission should use the data retained under the order of 5 December to publish, before the German election, a factual account of what TikTok's systems detected and when, because the next test is weeks away. The Parliament and the Council should ask the Commission to propose a common minimum standard, through the Act's risk provisions, for the detection and public reporting of coordinated inauthentic campaigns during national election periods. Our generation receives most of its political information through platforms whose logic no electoral law anticipated. Romania has shown what happens when the law catches up two days before the vote. The rest of the Union should catch up sooner.