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George Simion, leader of Romania’s nationalist AUR, in contrast with his initial reaction to the vote, has now called for the country’s top court to annul the results of last Sunday’s presidential elections, which he lost, claiming foreign governments interfered in the vote.
Simion submitted the request to Romania’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday, May 20th, arguing that foreign interference from France and neighboring Moldova had compromised the election’s legitimacy.
He accused both countries of intervening “directly or indirectly” to influence the outcome.
🚨🇷🇴 I officially ask Constitutional Court TO ANNUL Romanian presidential elections (May 2025).
— 🇷🇴 George Simion 🇲🇩 (@georgesimion) May 20, 2025
For the very reasons December elections were annulled: EXTERNAL INTERFERENCES by state and non-state actors.
This time proven with evidence! Neither 🇫🇷, nor 🇲🇩, nor anyone else has…
“I officially request that the elections be annulled. For the same reasons as in December: foreign interference. But this time we have clear evidence,” said Simion in a statement on his social media. “Neither France, nor Moldova, nor any other country has the right to interfere in Romania’s internal affairs,” he added.
Simion’s argument partly rests on recent statements by Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who said French intelligence services tried to force him to hand over user data under the pretext of counter-terrorism. Durov alleged that the operation had geopolitical motives and was to monitor activity in Eastern European countries such as Romania, Ukraine, and Moldova ahead of elections.
French foreign intelligence confirmed they met with me — allegedly to fight terrorism and child porn. In reality, child porn was never even mentioned. They did want IPs of terror suspects in France, but their main focus was always geopolitics: Romania, Moldova, Ukraine.
— Pavel Durov (@durov) May 19, 2025
Telegram has said it did not comply with the request, but confirmed it was approached by French officials in unclear circumstances.
Back in December, Simion strongly criticized the cancellation of that month’s election, calling it anti-democratic. Yet, he ended up demanding a similar cancellation himself.
Foreign interference, or rather the claims of it, has become a growing concern in the European institutions over the past year, with Brussels using it as an easy excuse to justify introducing further restrictions on free speech, meddling in national elections with EU-mandated social media censorship under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the upcoming Democracy Shield.
The EU’s double standards in this regard are evident and very much concerning. It immediately jumps to conclusions when there are claims of foreign interference helping its agenda, but it not only keeps silent when facing the ‘right’ type of interference, but actively enables and supports it.
However, after spending months slamming national and EU authorities for unsubstantiated claims of Russian interference leading to an election annulment, the nationalists should surely refrain from demanding the same anti-democratic measures they spent the past six months protesting.
The future credibility of democracy—in Romania or anywhere else—depends on accepting the will of the demos, the people, however they decide.