Presidential Elections, 4 and 18 May 2025

In May 2025, Romania held repeat presidential elections to select the country’s head of state. This followed the annulment of the 2024 presidential election on 6 December, just two days before the second and final round of votes was scheduled to take place. 

The rerun was triggered by the Constitutional Court invoking article 146(f) of the Constitution, which allows it to annul elections that fail to meet legal standards of fairness and legitimacy (Romania 1993). The basis for this ruling was substantial evidence of foreign interference benefiting independent candidate Călin Georgescu, who had won the first round in 2024—despite earlier showing just five per cent support in opinion polls (Radu 2025). Echoing the concerns of multiple international observers, the Court concluded that Russian actors had meddled in the process (Institute for the Study of War 2024; Digi24.ro 2024; MCC Brussels). Consequently, 2024’s first round was deemed invalid and Călin Georgescu was denied another presidential run (OSCE/ODIHR 2025). 

The decision led to protests in front of the Constitutional Court in Bucharest, where Molotov cocktails were used and multiple members of the security force were injured; violent rhetoric against Central Electoral Bureau members was also voiced by one prominent political figure (Edwards 2025). Elections are organized by the Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă, or Permanent Electoral Authority (PEA), an autonomous administrative institution (PEA n.d.). For the duration of presidential elections, a Central Electoral Bureau (CEB) is created, which consists of five judges, the president and vice-president of the PEA as well as up to ten representatives from political parties (Council of Europe n.d.).

The first round of the 2025 presidential elections was held on 4 May with 11 candidates on the ballot (International IDEA n.d.a). George Simion of the right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians won the first round but lost to the runner-up and incumbent mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, in the second. The latter, who ran as an independent, secured a vote share of 53.6 per cent (International IDEA n.d.a).

George Simion initially conceded the election and congratulated Dan on his victory. Two days later, Simion urged the Constitutional Court to annul the election alleging external influence—specifically, from France and Moldova (Simion 2025; Henley 2025). Rejecting this request, the Court validated Nicușor Dan as the legitimate president of Romania and he was sworn in on 26 May 2025.

The accusation against France had been sent to all users of Telegram in Romania by its CEO Pavel Durov. False narratives targeted Nicușor Dan—enforcement efforts by  various platforms being inadequate to the scale of bot activity and other amplification efforts (Radu 2025). There were reports of Russian hacker groups targeting government websites on the first-round election day with DDoS (Distributed denial of service) attacks. This method involves overwhelming sites with traffic until they are temporarily non-operational. Specifically, the Constitutional Court, the foreign ministry, the main government portal and four presidential candidates were affected (Paun 2025).

While the legal framework establishes equal opportunities for women and men, this is unmatched by quotas or other concrete gender equality policies. Women remain underrepresented in Romanian politics and only two of the 11 presidential candidates were women, neither of whom reached the second round. Both were frequently targeted online with misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Roma, and anti-Semitic messages, often from inauthentic accounts, aiming to discredit and intimidate. Issues related to gender equality and women’s socioeconomic empowerment received little attention during campaigns, and presidential candidates Antonescu and Simion addressed women primarily in the context of traditional societal roles such as “mothers, wives, and homemakers”   (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).  Contrary to international best practices, information materials related to the elections are not required to be available in minority languages. In the case of Roma people—who make up 3.4 per cent of the Romanian population—systemic barriers such as limited access to public services contribute to underrepresentation in public and political life (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).

Voter turnout increased significantly between rounds, climbing from 53.21 per cent in the first to 64.72 per cent in the second round (Prezență vot 2025). In the annulled 2024 first round, turnout had been 52.56 per cent; in the previous complete presidential election in 2019, it had been 51.18 and 54.86 per cent (in the first and second rounds, respectively) (International IDEA n.d.).

Innovations

In an effort to improve electoral integrity, Romania has become the first EU country to make use of blockchain technology during its national parliamentary elections in 2023 (Stănescu 2023). For the presidential elections in 2024, the PEA collaborated with the Special Telecommunication Service (STS) to record data collected at polling stations on a blockchain network (Dumitrescu 2024).