The Central Electoral Bureau of Romania regulates not only the electoral process, but also political advertising during the election campaign

Silvia Velikova, BNR, May 2, 2025

The presidential elections in Romania effectively begin today, with Romanians abroad able to vote in the first round for the future head of state over the next three days. The actual vote in Romania is on May 4, 2025. The leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, a far-right opposition party, George Simion, is the favorite in the first round of the presidential elections with about 30%.

A new poll, quoted by the Ziare website, puts the mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, in second place. He is an independent candidate. In third place, according to this poll, is the candidate of the ruling coalition, Crin Antonescu, with over 20%.

According to other polls, however, the battle for second place is very close. In fact, the candidates have similar support ratings. There are also a large number of Romanians who have not yet made up their minds about how to vote.

The presidential elections in Romania are special. They are likely to be studied in textbooks. The first vote at the end of December last year was annulled by a decision of the Constitutional Court, which found external interference, irregularities, etc. The elections were postponed until spring.

My colleague Vladimir Mitev and I will now comment on what is happening in Romania and how all these legal procedures are affecting our neighbors’ vote. Hello!

Hello!

As we discussed yesterday in a preliminary discussion with you, we cannot rely 100% on sociological agencies’ data, because there are many agencies and different polls. But at this point, it seems to be confirmed that we have a clear frontrunner and a clear battle over who Simion will face on the ballot. Is this relevant at this point?

Yes, I have the same information you have. I can say, to give a little more context, that it seems that the key to the outcome of these elections will be who the Social Democratic Party voters vote for, because it is a party with a more complex identity. It has a pro-European tendency, but it also has a traditional sovereignist tendency. It is no coincidence that we have a candidate named Victor Ponta who represents the sovereignists of this party. We will have to see what ultimately emerges from this contradictory electorate, which direction it will take, and which way the balance will tip.

As I mentioned, we now have elections because the first vote was canceled due to what happened on TikTok and with candidate Kalin Georgescu, who, surprisingly, came out on top. We could provide some context for our listeners on how these legal decisions, including a subsequent ruling by the Ploiești Court of Appeal, which literally on the eve of the elections said that there was no justification behind the Constitutional Court’s decision to cancel them, affect the campaign and voter attitudes.

There are several things that need to be said. First of all, I am referring to the legal and judicial aspects of last year’s Constitutional Court decision that annulled the elections. Even then, we had a conversation with lawyers, including an interview with one such lawyer published in the Bulgarian press.

And there were many comments that this decision was not entirely correct from a purely legal point of view, because we can remember that a few days earlier, the Constitutional Court itself had validated the elections, recognized them as legitimate, and that the results were correct. And then, somehow, it took another decision that annulled them. But the decision at the time was justified on political grounds.

And I think this is interesting as a general observation about the Romanian political system and its legal dimensions. It seems to me that in Romania, to a greater extent than in Bulgaria, there is flexibility in certain areas. When certain political decisions have to be made, there are ways to implement them.

So expediency trumps the law in certain respects?

Well, that’s how it seems to me, and I can give examples. Let me remind you that we had a big problem with the fact that these interim governments have somehow changed the way the state functions in recent years (and there was a certain rigidity in the political process that consolidated after the constitutional changes – ed.). In Romania, it is not common to have interim governments, but there are two legal practices that do not exist here.

One is that the government can issue so-called emergency ordinances. Usually, it is assumed that for these to be issued, there must be an urgent interest that needs to be achieved quickly. This means that the government has legislative powers. These ordinances have the force of law.

If you remember Liviu Dragnea, the first major sovereignist leader in Romania, he used these emergency ordinances very often to correct certain aspects of the fight against corruption, because it was probably thought that this way there would be less need to flood parliament with debates and change the legislative will of the government.

On the other hand, there is a practice called “assuming responsibility” on the part of the government, meaning that it can apply a certain law by subjecting it to a vote of no confidence if parliament so wishes. It is a little more complicated than I am explaining, but in practice, the government can propose a law and, if parliament does not call for a vote of no confidence or if the vote of no confidence does not pass, that law becomes law.

It is interesting that we cannot automatically impose our institutions on Romanian institutions because, here too, the Constitutional Court and challenges to elections are generally a post-process. It comes after the results are announced. Although we have seen that in Romania, this movement has managed to happen.

Just this detail, if we can clarify it, using again our knowledge of Bulgarian institutions… It is well known that in our case the Constitutional Court has the final say. Very recently, we had its decision that reshuffled the National Assembly, brought in a new political force and reshuffled the deputies, and its decision could not be corrected. Now, is this intervention by the Court of Appeal in Ploiești also part of this game? Or is it a kind of demonstration to show that there is discontent because the court was flooded with complaints about the Constitutional Court’s decision? Is it a kind of attempt to demonstrate civic will through the judicial system? What is this about?

I don’t think too much importance should be attached to this decision by the Ploiești Court of Appeal, which would have overturned the Constitutional Court’s decision. This cannot happen. There is simply a certain hierarchy in these courts and institutions. You cannot have a regional court… What is intended cannot happen.

Yes, and we see that there will be elections.

It’s obvious… There are other examples in recent history.

I may surprise some people by pointing out this detail, but for a long time, or at least for a while, Romania refused to recognize Venezuelan President Guaido. If you remember, years ago there was a big campaign across Europe and around the world to recognize this president, who was not actually the legitimate president of Venezuela. And Romania had, perhaps, a special interest in Venezuela. In the end, it recognized Guaido at some point, but it delayed for a long time.

Again, this was a sign that it did not agree with something. And I think that in Romania we regularly see that there is disagreement in society about certain things. The line that must be followed is followed. But it is evident, perhaps again for political reasons, that there is another trend, another way of thinking, other interests. At least that is how I interpret this “decision” of the Ploiești Court of Appeal.

Now let’s see how what happened around the election cancellation affected the campaign and will probably affect the results. There was some activity from the European Commission on TikTok.

Is there another TikTok campaign? We are now seeing Călin Georgescu’s authority or popularity automatically spilling over to some of the other candidates.

I don’t think it’s just Georgescu or his successors who are campaigning on TikTok. Nicușor Dan also has a fairly capable online propaganda team, if I may say so. And there have been posts suggesting that he also has a fairly good presence on social media, including, I believe, on TikTok.

On the other hand, Crin Antonescu has raised quite significant funds for his campaign and has a lot of videos that are constantly being leaked everywhere. So perhaps what needs to be said is that the Central Electoral Bureau in Romania is playing a more active role in this campaign and there are certain policies, certain rules that it is applying. It might be interesting to see this, including in relation to our campaigns, because there is a situation where it was reported that at the beginning of April, Facebook posts by over 120 or 150 people, regular users of the social network, were blocked following a decision by the Central Electoral Bureau. And here it might be interesting to say what this is about.

There is a status of political actor that is attributed to certain users of social networks and certain people who come out with messages for or against voting for certain candidates. Political actors are, of course, candidates in elections. They can also be people who hold elected office. They can be members of the European Parliament and so on. They can be political parties or alliances of political parties.

But it is interesting that there are situations where people who are ordinary citizens but who repeatedly and consistently post messages calling for or opposing votes for certain candidates are treated as political actors, even though they are not politicians in principle. As a result, there have been cases where these citizens’ Facebook posts have been deleted. This is something I find interesting.

There was much more active intervention by Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau during the campaign. Another interesting thing is that, perhaps to circumvent this greater online control, Simion’s campaign tried to use traditional methods of propaganda, for example through letters. It turned out that the parties had access to people’s addresses. Simion’s campaign first sent 1 million letters, then 2.8 million letters to elderly people in villages. And it was decided that these letters had to be withdrawn (because the GDPR regulation had been violated).

And how will this happen physically?

There have been no publications on how this will happen. I assume that the Post Office, as the distributor, is instructed not to deliver them. But this is interesting to me because it seems to me that this has not happened before in this country.

In Romania, we have a very active election regulatory authority, which is also involved during the campaign. And, in a way, it oversees certain standards. And maybe I should mention a third thing, if we have time.

Quite a bit, yes.

There is also oversight of donations. Perhaps almost all candidates have problems in one form or another in this regard. For example, the mayor of Bucharest used a city hall car at campaign events, and he is not allowed to do that.

Or he didn’t report any donations. There are various violations that have been caught. I haven’t noticed any sanctions so far. We’ll have to see how this affects the final result and the validation of the elections.

But do you think this more visible control is due to the December elections? Or is it simply a peculiarity of the Romanian electoral process?

I think that the experience in December has indeed led to deeper reflection in the country. And for me personally, it is interesting to see what the outcome will be. Not only in terms of percentages, but also in terms of compliance with procedures and, in general, consideration of the entire electoral process, including the campaign.

One last question: are there traditional electoral events, rallies where voters meet candidates on the ground in Bucharest? Are there debates between candidates? Do these influence the electoral process?

There have been several electoral debates. The last one was watched by a fifth of Romanians, which I think is a sign of political engagement. And it probably means that the public is interested in the elections and may vote in significant numbers. But what strikes me is that there are constant “revelations” or accusations about who met with whom, who met with which secret service chiefs.

If you are looking for the specifics of the Romanian elections, each candidate announces that they are against “the system” and each is accused by others of having links to one or another of the prominent figures in “the system.”

It’s a really interesting process, which is worth talking about in detail when we see the results. The elections are on Sunday, but it’s just the first round. The big vote and the key vote will be on May 18, 2025. This is another Romanian thing—there’s more time between the two rounds.

We heard from our colleague Vladimir Mitev. He works for the Romanian section of Radio Bulgaria. Together with him, we will comment on both election day and the results of the first round of the presidential elections in Romania.

Photo: The Central Electoral Bureau (source: YouTube)

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