Romanian Militant Democracy and the Time Machine
Romania was recently rocked by the annulment of presidential elections in December 2024, a crisis apparently stifled by the March 2025 invalidation of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy in do-over elections. Mr. Georgescu, an ultranationalist firebrand, styles himself in a MAGA-like fashion as tribune of “the People” and warrior against a “Soros-driven” elite conspiracy. The Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist features largely in the “sovereigntist” imaginaries, against all reason and evidence to the contrary. Primarily, Georgescu and his inner sanctum aim to signal in this manner Nationalist International synchronicity. He was indeed supported by a large number of influential figures in the new US administration, from Vice-President Vance to DNI Tulsi Gabbard and the Twitter-prone Mr. Musk. Europhile opponents present the invalidations, first of the elections and now of the candidacy, as valiant examples of militant democracy and rule of law in action.
I argue that the story is both simpler and more complex, partly a local variant of “authoritarian liberalism”/illiberalism interplays, partly an example of idiosyncratic Eastern traditions of the rule of law showcased in Euro-friendly attire. In what follows, I first parse the juridical specifics and then continue to briefly explain their contextual backdrop and relevance.
On March 11, 2025, the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) has rejected the complaint by Georgescu against the refusal by the electoral commission (Biroul Electoral Central, BEC) to register his candidacy in do-over May elections. This move closed for the time being a protracted saga that started in October, when the flirtation of the Constitutional Court with “militant democracy” suddenly began.
The CCR has the power, under Art. 146 letter (k) of the Constitution to declare parties unconstitutional. Under letter (f) of the same article, it oversees the procedure for presidential elections and confirms ballot returns. For over thirty years, the Court has constantly reminded all plaintiffs, filing petitions against candidate of all imaginable political colours, that its powers under letter f. were merely clerical. In October 2024, it changed tack and invalidated the registration of a far-right candidate, Mrs. Diana Iovanovici-Șoșoacă. Șoșoacă, leader of a splinter far-right faction bearing the unseemly name SOS Romania, was credited to win around 7% of the vote. The Dworkinian innovation occurred in an abbreviated formation of seven out of nine justices, by a six to one majority. As the reasoning now went, a candidate must demonstrate to the Court’s satisfaction not only fulfilment of formal prerequisites (35 years of age, no criminal convictions, 200.000 supporting signatures, etc.) but also adhesion to the constitutional values enshrined in Art. 1 (3) of the fundamental law, values reflected by the legal systems of the “great European family.” Otherwise, the majority mused in Marbury v. Madisonian key, if they do not believe them, how could they ever uphold them? He or she, once elected, would perjure themselves when swearing the oath to defend and protect the Constitution. Thus, a potential perjurer may not be allowed to run. Essentially, as the sole dissenting justice, Mrs. Laura-Iuliana Scântei, implied, militant democracy argumentative instruments were stealthily moved from letter k. to letter f. This occurred against the grain of thirty years of caselaw and in the absence of the procedural guarantees adequate to the displaced setting (which, in the party ban procedure, never used to date, are amply provided under the Court’s organic law).
The CCR was widely criticised for the move, read by a broad palette of commentators to signify a coup, meant to engineer a second round in which the Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate would confront Mr. Simion. The latter is the leader of the ultranationalist flagship faction, AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians). A Simion-Ciolacu runoff duet was the only set-up in which the PSD champion could win. One cannot prove such suspicions, but they were not unfounded. In the majority of six, five judges were promoted to the bench by or with the votes of PSD-controlled majorities. Moreover, Romanian apex institutions are known aficionados of this sort of sophisticated game of chess, which they most often play in cloak-and-dagger fashion and by throwing dices to move pieces on the chessboard.
Polls and calculations were in any event disproved. To universal shock, the votes of Mrs. Șoșoacă did migrate but not to Mr. Simion. The frontrunner in the first round of elections was Mr. Georgescu, an ultranationalist whose campaign flew under the radar of the mainstream media. He campaigned mainly on TikTok and declared, returning a “zero contributions” declaration, that his run was completely volunteer-based. The runner-up was Mrs. Lasconi, the champion of the putatively progressive, centre-right USR. She went ahead Mr. Ciolacu by a few thousand votes. What followed was panic and then a Balkan-style Bush v. Gore recount ordered by the CCR. The recount of nine million votes was decreed by injunction, upon the request of a minor candidate who, with 1% of the vote, arguably lacked standing. Initially, the recount term was set from one day to the next day’s afternoon but thereafter extended. Yet, no irregularities to change the candidate order (which would have justified an annulment of that round only) were found. After further dithering, the CCR validated the vote returns and greenlighted the second round between Georgescu and Lasconi.
Just as the poll had commenced abroad, the CCR met “informally” and annulled the entire election. As legal basis for the ruling, without a legal cause of action, it claimed the prefatory provision of Art. 142 (1) (“guarantor for the supremacy of the Constitution”). The provision allegedly colours concrete attributions (or the lack thereof). For supporting evidence, the CCR used declassified intelligence briefs by four secret services: the Telecommunications Service (STS), the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), and the Interior Ministry service (DGPI). Most of the briefs are cryptic and poetic. They allege manipulation on social media. A three-page brief by SIE indicates apodictically similarities with Russian election interference in Moldova and Ukraine. The STS, which actually supports the logistics of elections, found no problems. Some information in the declassified SRI reports is post-dated, after the Superior Council for National Defence (CSAȚ) meeting when they were supposedly presented. The SRI declassified “annexes” to a classified main document.
No hard evidence of Russian influence surfaced to date. It was however found out by the Tax Authority that the National Liberal Party, in the governing coalition, paid out of its own public subsidies for a TikTok campaign, which ended up working to promote Mr. Georgescu. The Venice Commission issued an Urgent Report, which, in subdued tones, upbraided the Court along a broad panoply of procedural and substantive points, from emphasis on the passive Bickelian virtues of judicatures to the perils of relying in court cases on abbreviated intelligence reports. The EIU ranking for 2024 downgraded Romania to the status of a “hybrid democracy”, the only one in the EU.
On March 7, Georgescu filed with BEC his candidacy for the restaged elections in May. On March 8, the CCR met (informally yet again) to discuss complaints against a BEC decision that had not yet been rendered. Under the presidential elections law 370/2004 the BEC has 48 hours to issue a registration decision, then complaints may be filed within 24 hours with the CCR against such decisions, which the Court has an additional two days to rule on. On March 9, the BEC refused registration by a ten to four vote. This electoral body is composed ad-hoc before elections and comprises five Court of Cassation judges, the president and the two-vice-presidents of the Permanent Electoral Authority, and up to ten representatives of the parliamentary parties. The President of the AEP was removed on February 28 by the parliamentary majority; one of the two vice-presidents serves as interim head and took his place in BEC. Until now, it was understood that the body certifies registrations by counting signatures and affidavits. Thus, the decision and the reasoning supporting it are revolutionary. The BEC based its action on the “Șoșoacă” and the invalidation ruling by the CCR. The invalidation ruling does not however formally refer to Mr. Georgescu, whereas in the Iovanovici-Șoșoacă case the court explicitly stated (par. 48) that such verifications (“democracy fitness” of presidential candidates) are “the exclusive prerogative of the CCR.” Be that as it may, the forum castling took some pressure off the Court itself. Georgescu filed a complaint against the BEC decision on the 10th of March, which the CCR rejected unanimously on the 11th.
According to all polls, Georgescu was favoured to win the first round and yet only a few hundred supporters, those already in situ, rioted in front of the BEC building in Old Town Bucharest on the 9th of March. Roadblocks prevented others from joining in. In front of Palace of Parliament, which houses the Constitutional Court, the demonstration on the 11th was even smaller and peaceful. This was in part because the Court’s solution was correctly perceived as a foregone conclusion. Partly, this was also because “The People” Mr. Georgescu speaks for and to does not live in Bucharest. His discourse, replete with Trumpian-mythological tropes about the lost grandeur of the Romanians, addresses the diaspora and the silent majority who lives in rural and small-city Romania.
In the second-poorest country of the Union, Bucharest is, according to Eurostat data, more affluent than Madrid, Berlin, Athens, and Budapest. In a country whose intelligence services are among the best-appointed in NATO (the budget of the SRI alone exceeds that of the German BND), appropriations for education and research are in GDP percentages constantly the lowest in the Union. (Education and the meritocratic selection of elites might actually be the key, since inequality has fallen somewhat in recent years.) Rule of law instrumentalism has been practiced for decades, also with EU imprimatur, to camouflage Potemkin-village-style the amassing contradictions. To wit, until it became impossible to deny that the sizeable Romanian diaspora in Western Europe will opt, if given this option, predominantly for the far-right, Romanians abroad were swayed by the centre-right and “politically romanticised” for external consumption as an unmitigated force for liberalism in Europe and beyond. Yet, if a European society did congeal at pedestrian grassroots levels, it is on average less Habermasian than the country itself.
Essentially, Georgescu, a charismatic figure in his own right, put a dangerous, ultranationalist spin on what is at its roots primarily a class/education/social ladder divide. This is not to deny that Georgescu is a very dangerous figure, but only to point out that his snake-oil salesmanship instrumentalises actual problems that have been ignored. Romania looks somewhat like a version of H.G. Wells’s Time Machine, where fructivore, futuristic-hedonistic Eloi live concentrated in Bucharest and a handful of affluent cities. The intelligentsia, loquacious tip of the Eloi spear, is desirous to be protected by institutions (courts, prosecutors, intelligence “community”, the Gendarmes), no matter how, from their less enlightened compatriots. Whatever will shelter “us”, in whichever manner, will be called “European rule of law.” Big big-urbanite elites perceive and often depict Georgescu’s following, albeit not for export purposes, as savages (Morlocks who would metaphorically “feed on us” if given the democracy chance). There is reason for the worry, just as there is cause for the aggravation. Conversely, a Georgescu supporter recently described Bucharest, Timișoara, Iași and Cluj as a “Soros-beholden big cities,” unable to express the intuition without the mental props of his own camp. Much of this has been lurking in the background for a long time and resurfaces in various avatars. Forms of social racism were for example ubiquitous during the hype of anticorruption, when, for instance, valiant centre-right youth in the city of Iași prided themselves on throwing one-leu banknotes (twenty eurocents) at PSD supporters. But the wheel may turn.
As long as the general configuration persists, big urbanites will continue to abuse façade, RoL-resemblant instruments and supportive narratives, to deflect the anger against a system that a majority of the population apparently perceives as unfair and oppressive. Mr. Georgescu capitalised on this rage, and others might in the future. The Romanian brand of wehrhafte Demokratie has already found enthusiastic supporters and other lists of invalidation proposals are concocted. If and how long the charade might continue cannot be known. Absent the understanding of the risks involved, there is little justification for the belief that dangers can be abated in perpetuity.