Romanian court annuls result of presidential election first round

Romania's constitutional court has annulled the result of the first round of voting in the presidential election just days before the second round was due to take place.

It means the process will be restarted from scratch, with the government due to decide a date for a new vote.

The first round was won by Calin Georgescu, an almost unknown far-right Nato-sceptic who has previously praised Vladimir Putin.

The court's decision comes after intelligence documents were declassified, suggesting Georgescu benefitted from a mass influence operation – conducted from abroad – to interfere with the result of the vote.

Outgoing Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said the court's decision to annul was "the only correct solution after the declassification of the documents... which show that the result of the Romanians' vote was blatantly distorted as a result of Russia's intervention".

The judges of the court met on Friday morning, despite having announced the previous night that they would not discuss new information regarding possible external influence on the elections until the second round of voting.

The law stipulates that, in the event of the annulment of the elections, they should resume on the second Sunday after the date of the annulment - which would have meant on 22 December.

However, the court has decided to ask the government to rerun the entire electoral process, and therefore the electoral campaign.

Last week, the court had ordered a recount of votes cast in Sunday's first round following allegations that social media platform TikTok gave "preferential treatment" to the surprise winner, Calin Georgescu.

Georgescu, a radical with no party of his own, campaigned mainly on TikTok. The platform said it was "categorically false to claim his account was treated differently to any other candidate".

He won 23% of the vote, with 19% for the runner-up, Elena Lasconi, of the opposition Save Romania Union and Ciolacu of the governing Social Democrats in third.