New rules for the election campaign
The Romanian government made public the dates of the upcoming presidential election, May 4 and 18, and imposed new rules regarding the voting and the election campaign.
Ştefan Stoica, 17.01.2025, 14:00
It is now official: the Romanian government has established, by emergency ordinance, that the presidential election will take place on May 4th and 18th respectively. The presidential vote was supposed to put an end to last year’s electoral marathon, but the Constitutional Court cancelled it, shortly before the second round on December 8, on the grounds that the entire electoral process would have been flawed and hijacked, with the involvement of an external state actor, in the favor of the winner of the first round, Călin Georgescu, considered a pro-Russian extremist. The executive came up with new rules, related to voting in the diaspora and the unfolding of the campaign. Romanians outside the country’s borders will be able to vote for three days, as before, but in modified time intervals.
Thus, on Friday and Saturday, voting in the diaspora will last from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. local time, but on Sunday, May 4, when voting is also held in the country, the vote will end at 9:00 p.m. Romanian time. This measure was adopted at the proposal of the Permanent Electoral Authority, to avoid leaving a time gap in which the vote can be influenced, after voting ended in Romania, but continued abroad, in the polling stations located west of Romania, on the related time zones. If there are still people abroad who want to vote, the extension of voting in the countries located west of Romania can be done until midnight, Romania’s time. The ordinance also establishes several obligations for posting and distributing election campaign materials online. They must have clear identification elements such as political advertising, including who is paying them or if targeting techniques are used.
Failure to comply with the new rules is sanctioned with a fine of up to 50,000 lei, the equivalent of 10 thousand Euros, and in the case of the large online platforms the fine can reach 5% of the turnover, if the advertising material in question is not removed within five hours from the notification of the Permanent Electoral Authority. According to the government, a monitoring mechanism is underway for the materials that will be published on social networks, and notifications and complaints regarding possible violations of the regulations must be submitted to the Central Electoral Bureau. The new rules aim to prevent what happened before the first round, when the candidate Georgescu, who declared himself independent, was massively promoted, disproportionately compared to the others, on TikTok.
Several important non-governmental organizations have criticized, however, these new provisions which they say were introduced without a prior public debate and could affect the fundamental rights of citizens, being a threat to the freedom of expression. According to the NGOs, the ordinance risks restricting political opinions and legitimate debates. The Save Romania Union (USR) leader, Elena Lasconi, who had qualified in the decisive round alongside Georgescu, criticized the modification of the voting program in the diaspora, saying that it represents an act of discrimination and a serious violation of the right to vote of Romanians abroad. (LS)
