Disinformation circulating on Chinese-owned platform TikTok falsely claims that European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen personally intervened to call off the second round of voting in Romania’s presidential elections, Euronews reports.
The unprecedented decision to annul the first-round vote and cancel the runoff was made earlier this month by Romania’s Constitutional Court. It cited declassified intelligence reports that suggested the first-round result was compromised by a “state actor”.
Von der Leyen, who helms the EU’s executive arm, had no stake in Romania’s judicial decision. However, videos posted on TikTok falsely claim she pressured the Romanian government and outgoing President Klaus Iohannis to cancel the vote.
“Ursula von der Leyen gave the order to cancel the elections in Romania. Klaus Werner Johannis executed the order,” one TikTok video falsely claims, based on comments made by a Conservative political commentator on French TV.
Another video claims von der Leyen “called Bucharest foaming at the mouth and asking to do everything so that Calin Georgescu is executed.”
Many of the accounts spreading the false claims also promote anti-EU and anti-Western messages, and praise Calin Georgescu, a little-known ultra-nationalist mystic who swept to an improbable victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential election in November.
Websites claiming to be news media have also accused von der Leyen of “unauthorised interference” in the election, citing information in what they describe as an influential French media outlet, France Soir.
The outlet in question is in fact a known disinformation portal owned by a conspiracy theorist, and the original French article does not suggest that the Commission chief had any role in the annulment of the vote.
The European Commission has so far avoided commenting on the decision to cancel the runoff, saying that it’s “for the Romanian citizens to decide on their destiny.”
However, it has stepped up its investigations into how TikTok, a Chinese-owned social platform, could have potentially breached EU-wide digital rules in facilitating the first-round victory of Georgescu, who was virtually unknown in Romania weeks before the vote.
The Commission has now made an urgent request to TikTok for more information about how it could have enabled a state actor to artificially inflate Georgescu’s online campaign, and ordered it to preserve any data, including its system of recommendations and the monetised promotion of political content, related to electoral risks across the EU.
Romania’s domestic intelligence agency has reported that businessman Bogdan Peschir spent some €1 million on the campaign, including making payments to TikTok users for promoting Georgescu’s campaign, in violation of Romanian legislation.
Peschir has denied the allegations against him. Three properties he owned were raided by Romanian police earlier this month and authorities froze $7 million of his assets.
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