US Vice President JD Vance on Friday claimed that European leaders had pressured Romania into cancelling its disputed presidential elections.
Speaking at the opening day of the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance said the elections were annulled “on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.”
He did not provide any evidence for his assertions but criticized the suggestion that democracy can be destroyed with digital advertising from a foreign country, saying that if you believe that then your democracy “was not very strong begin with.”
Romania’s Constitutional Court canceled the presidential elections on Dec. 6 two days before a runoff after intelligence reports revealed Russian interference in favor of pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu.
JD Vance mentioned a former European Commissioner who “recently appeared on television and seemed delighted that the Romanian government had just canceled an entire election” and suggested that “the same thing could happen in Germany”.
Although not named directly, the former commissioner referred to is Thierry Breton, who recently pointed to the Romanian precedent to suggest a possible annulment of the results of the German elections if they were not conducted correctly.
“They did it in Romania and it will have to be done in Germany too, if necessary,” Breton said.“For years, we have been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values, everything from our policy towards Ukraine to digital censorship is presented as a defense of democracy.
“When we see European courts annulling elections and senior officials threatening to annul others, we should ask ourselves whether we are holding ourselves to a high enough standard,” JD Vance said.
He claimed that the Romanian elections were canceled “on the basis of weak suspicions from an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from our continental neighbors.”
He criticized the suggestion that democracy can be destroyed with digital advertising from a foreign country, saying that if you believe that then your democracy “was not very strong begin with.”
He also criticized the organizers of the Munich conference for not allowing populist parties from attending the event, saying that “we don’t have to agree but it is our duty to at least engage in dialogue with them.”
“For many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it increasingly looks like old entrenched interests hiding behind Soviet-era dirty words like disinformation and lying, who simply don’t like the idea that someone with an alternative point of view might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote differently or, even worse, win an election,” Vance added.
