site.btaRomania’s Simion Blames Foreign Powers for Presidential Election Defeat

At least four countries interfered in the presidential elections in Romania, claims vote loser George Simion in an appeal to the Constitutional Court, requesting that the elections be annulled. The Court rejected his appeal on Thursday, Digi24 reported. In his appeal, published by the Court on Wednesday, Simion claims there was interference in the elections by France, Poland, Moldova, and Spain.

At presidential runoffs on May 18, pro-European candidate Nicusor Dan won a closely contested race against hard-line nationalist George Simion, garnering around 54% of the votes. In the first round of voting on May 4, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) came first with nearly 41% of the vote, while Dan finished second with some 21%.

Contesting the elections before the Constitutional Court, Simion claims that there was foreign interference in the election process as well as a disinformation campaign among voters and attempts to smear his nomination.

Simion's appeal reads that the French President indirectly showed  his support for Dan by saying that the May 18 elections were extremely important for Romania's correct European path. The Polish Prime Minister compared Dan with pro-European Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who won the first round of the presidential elections in Poland and will face right-wing candidate Karol Nawrocki in the run-offs on June 1. Moldova's President publicly expressed her support for Dan and made a comparison with her own country, where she successfully defeated "a Kremlin-controlled individual", thus insinuating that Simion is a pro-Russian candidate, the appeal reads. According to Simion, Spain's interference is related to opposition leader Alberto Nunes Feijoo, who in a message supported Dan and called on Romanians living in Spain to do not trust in "populism and those who have a solution to everything, without having ever solved anything", and to trust in Europe and pro-European parties. The message also described Dan as "Romania's European future".

According to Simion, US media too published information about interference and pressure in the Romanian elections by some EU Member States. The appeal states that “the will of the people has been trampled upon by an alliance of technocrats, pressure on foreign intelligence services and court rulings.”

Simion's appeal came amid accusations by the founder of the Telegram messaging app that Paris had tried to influence Romania's presidential elections, which France's foreign intelligence service has flatly denied. Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who is a Russian citizen, wrote on X that he was willing to testify about alleged foreign interference in Romania's presidential election if that would help Romanian democracy.

Two days before the elections, Simion also accused Dan of being behind a campaign to rig the Moldovan elections, and accused the Moldovan authorities of making people vote against him.