What Romania’s election turmoil reveals about TikTok’s political influence

"Romania 2024, not 1984!" reads the sign. The protest in Bucharest took place in November 2024, after the far-right candidate Calin Georgescu had unexpectedly won the first round of the presidential election. The Constitutional Court later annulled the election. AFP

In May 2025, Romanians had to return to the polls for their presidential election. The previous year’s vote had been annulled by the Constitutional Court over Russian interference. The think tank Expert Forum, supported by Switzerland, has gathered evidence of illegal campaigning.

Romania’s 2024 presidential election is seen by many in Europe as a symbol of Russian interference. Officials from the European Union have cited it as an example of how Moscow can manipulate campaigns.

Others say the annulled results also exposed how recklessly Romanian institutions had acted, thereby undermining trust in the democratic process.

“There was no fraud on election day itself to explain Georgescu’s victory,” says Septimius Parvu from the Romanian think tank Expert Forum. But the campaign was very unusual. A crowded field of candidates from both major and smaller parties took part, including those on the far right. By the end of the night, Georgescu, a pro-Russian, independent far-right candidate, had won 23% of the vote.

Septimius Parvu from the Romanian think tank Expert Forum. Zur Verfügung gestellt

Parvu believes that many Romanians did not back Georgescu but were instead voting against the parties in government. Why this benefited Georgescu remains unclear.

According to Parvu, the number of TikTok accounts backing Georgescu increased within only a few weeks, outpacing the combined growth of accounts supporting all other candidates over the whole year. Expert Forum doubts this was organic, that is, driven by genuine, unpaid users.

Georgescu ran a TikTok campaign likely to have cost millions of euros. Officially, his campaign spending stood at zero.

Swiss support to protect ‘established democratic structures’

During Romania’s 2024 and 2025 elections, Expert Forum tracked TikTok activity, flagged suspicious behaviour, and filed formal complaints.

The Peace and Human Rights Division of the Swiss foreign ministry backed the think tank in 2025 as part of a “small-scale project”, a ministry spokesperson says. The support is part of a “targeted, flexible, and context-specific approach” aimed at safeguarding established democratic structures, the spokesperson adds.

>>Read our article below on Switzerland’s international promotion of democracy:

Romania’s election laws are strict, Parvu explains: “Election campaigning by third parties is prohibited in Romania. The money must go to the candidates and the candidates can then use it.” But in practice, enforcement appears weak. “Let me put it this way: the supervisory capacity is very limited,” he says.

After the November 2024 elections, Expert Forum filed a complaint with the electoral authority and called for an investigation. It also published a template for others to use. “At the end of the day, some 5,000 people filed a complaint based on our template,” Parvu recalls. “We try to teach people how to file complaints and ensure a fair election themselves.”

Crisis of trust

According to Parvu, this increased public awareness has not offset the damage. In his view, the annulled 2024 election triggered a new crisis of trust in Romania. Trust in politicians and parties was already low, and this has now spread to the electoral process itself.

The first round of the presidential election was held on November 24, 2024, with Georgescu receiving the most votes. Parliamentary elections followed on December 1, with a run-off scheduled for December 8. On December 4, the presidential office released intelligence documentsExternal link pointing to an influence campaign that had backed Georgescu, and evidence of Russian interference and illegal financing. Two days later, the Constitutional Court annulled the election completely.

Supporters of Calin Georgescu protest outside the Constitutional Court in Bucharest on January 10, 2025 carrying a coffin bearing the word “Democracy”. AFP

It was not just the far-right that criticised the court’s decision. Parvu says it was a “nuclear decision” that may do long-term damage to Romanian democracy. Many observers took a similar view, including legal scholar Alina Carrozzini. In a commentaryExternal link, she acknowledged that the court had sought to uphold the rule of law, but that the timing and circumstances had “shot Romanian democracy in the foot”.

Across Europe, the annulled vote was widely seen as a case of Russian hybrid warfare. In spring 2025, EU Commissioner Kaja Kallas saidExternal link the events showed how disinformation could be “a bullet through the heart of democracy”, and that foreign interference was “the gun, the shooter, and their entire arsenal”.

What role did foreign influence from Russia play?

For Parvu, the 2024 elections are still not over. “We are still trying to understand exactly what happened,” he says.

There was no doubt that Russia had interfered. “But some politicians in Romania wanted to portray it as if it was just the Russians – but it wasn’t,” Parvu says. Illegal support for Georgescu also came from within Romania itself. “”How much was Russian influence, how much was Romanian influence? We simply don’t know yet.”

What is clear, he says, is that Georgescu received illegal campaign funding from third parties. “Various stakeholders who were not allowed to do so supported him – via cryptocurrencies, via off the platform payments to the influencers who posted his hashtags,” Parvu explains. There was also notable activity from online bot networks and intermediaries.

Parvu also sees the events surrounding the 2024 election campaign as an institutional failure. Expert Forum’s slogan calls for “a democratic, modern and normal country”. In such a country, he argues, officials, courts and politicians would have taken responsibility for investigating what had happened.

The importance of TikTok

TikTok has rules against political advertising. In a reportExternal link, Expert Forum cited content supporting Georgescu that “blatantly violated the company’s own rules” yet remained online. The platform saidExternal link it was committed to protecting “the integrity of TikTok during Romanian elections”.

TikTok says that between September and December 6, 2024, it prevented “the creation of more than 400,000 spam accounts in Romania” and removed fake accounts linked to Georgescu as well as other parties. Romania is one of TikTok’s largest markets in Europe, with the platform reaching about 57% of the population.

Expert Forum therefore began monitoring hashtags in Romanian election campaigns. The aim is to identify “inauthentic” activity, such as content that may originate from bot networks or fake accounts.

The EU’s Digital Services Act is designed to address “inauthentic behaviour”, but Parvu says its wording remains unclear.

Expert Forum’s observations on Tiktok

This is why Expert Forum works with both the platforms and Romanian institutions. When political advertising violates a platform’s rules or Romanian law, it reports it.

Parvu says knowing when to act is often like walking a tightrope.

They weigh matters carefully. “It is not easy, and not something we do lightly, to report something as ‘inauthentic behaviour’.” But when large numbers of bots are involved, it is clear. “I can accept that others may hold different views, but when robots are trying to influence elections, that is something else,” Parvu says.

There were even Georgescu accounts labelled “number 1”, “number 2” and “number 3”. “This is not authentic content,” Parvu says. Other warning signs include accounts with no posts but many followers. “There were many of these in 2024 and 2025.” On some social media platforms, it is also not possible to see where an account is based.

Thousands of complaints about 2025 elections

For several years, Expert Forum has run online workshops for journalists on how to investigate breaches of campaign finance rules. For Parvu, understanding where the money comes from is “the backbone of political integrity”. Since the 2024 presidential election, Expert Forum has observed that more people now share this view. During the 2025 elections, between 4,000 and 5,000 complaints relating to the campaign and election day were submitted to Expert Forum’s reporting systemExternal link.

Although Georgescu was barred from the 2025 presidential race, there was still criticism of the election, which was won by the pro-European candidate Nicusor Dan.

The team at Expert Forum, which worked on the campaign with support from Switzerland, noticed that the interference scandal had a knock-on effect. “Other parties have started doing the same,” Parvu says. More parties are turning to TikTok, and not always complying with the law. “2024 normalised something that is harmful for future election campaigns.”

Edited by David Eugster. Adapted from German by David Kelso Kaufher/gw.