Romanian government accused of online censorship ahead of election rerun

The Romanian government is being accused of censorship ahead of a presidential election this Sunday — and not by the MAGA-loving right-wing crowd normally clamoring about free speech.

Liberal civil society groups and centrist politicians say draconian online content laws rushed through to counter Russian disinformation after November’s canceled poll have prevented normal people from having their say on social media.

According to a review of social media posts, supporters of far-right front-runner George Simion are among those targeted.

Last year’s presidential election was controversially canceled after what authorities deemed to be major Russian election interference in support of ultranationalist candidate Călin Georgescu. With Georgescu banned from standing in this month’s rerun, 38-year-old nationalist Simion is in the lead after the first round but polls have shown the gap to the moderate candidate Nicușor Dan narrowing significantly for Sunday’s decisive vote.

Elena Calistru, president and co-founder of local non-profit Funky Citizens, which monitors disinformation, said that the implementation of measures passed by the Romanian authorities is failing to meet the bar for electoral objectivity. 

The criticisms center on emergency regulations rushed through in January that are considered too far-reaching and punitive, with regular voters unfairly considered as “political actors,” platforms required to take down content within five hours, and the risk of fines of more than half an average yearly salary. Over 4,000 content-removal orders have been given since April 4, most of them for TikTok.

Neither Romania’s Permanent Electoral Authority nor the Central Electoral Bureau responded to a request for comment.

“The authorities failed big time in November and they want tools to solve some of this behavior,” said Septimius Parvu, who coordinates the elections program at the local non-profit Expert Forum, which fights for transparency and accountability. 

The Central Electoral Bureau “has to follow tens of complaints daily” and “some of their decisions are controversial, as the institution ordered that content which should not be labeled as political advertising to be removed,” he said.

Dan Barna, a Romanian center-right lawmaker in the European Parliament, last month wrote to the Commission to raise concerns about the election bureau “censoring private citizens’ free speech,” citing the removal of posts “under the pretence” that users are political actors.

If emergency rules mean “regular private citizens, not related to any political affiliation or nothing” are seeing their posts banned, it’s a “Kafka”-esque story, Barna said in an interview. 

“I’m really afraid that if there are too many abusive deletions or if we have too many court decisions [overturning them] afterwards,” this election could fuel far-right criticisms of legitimate efforts to protect against illegal content online such as hate speech, he said.

With Călin Georgescu banned from standing in this month’s rerun, 38-year-old nationalist George Simion is in the lead after the first round but polls have shown the gap to the moderate candidate Nicușor Dan narrowing significantly for Sunday’s decisive vote. | Robert Ghement/EFE via EPA

One of the videos the bureau has demanded be taken down shows a man in his living room clapping to the sound of pop music with the caption “Clap if you want to come home too, clap for GS and CG,” referring to George Simion and Călin Georgescu. The man, who has 148 followers, mostly shares content about a child who appears to be his daughter.

Several videos that POLITICO reviewed showed influencers of various types posting content supporting Simion. Some come from local politicians and accounts that could be bots. 

According to the Central Electoral Bureau, any user who mostly posts political messages and does so repeatedly should be considered to be a political actor, and any content that “directly or indirectly urges voters to choose or not to choose, to vote or not to vote” for a candidate is considered political advertising material. 

Users can contest decisions in court within 48 hours, which some have done, but Calistru from Funky Citizens said not everyone is in a position to do so. 

The Central Electoral Bureau is a temporary administrative body that will effectively disappear after Sunday’s election. Past experience shows “that even though there are cases in which some of these temporary bodies might be abusive in their conduct, you have no legal way to go against them in a court,” Calistru said. 

Platforms aren’t necessarily complying: “All the platforms want to check the decisions, there is a reluctance to enforce them, especially in the five-hour window,” according to Parvu. 

Still, concerns have also been raised about the ordinance’s compatibility with EU law and a lack of accountability due to its emergency nature. “The way [the ordinance] was done was very untransparent,” it appeared on the government’s agenda and not published in advance. It was “approved first and put up for public debate later,” said Parvu.

Bucharest’s court of appeal ruled the emergency laws should have been vetted by Romania’s Constitutional Court in a late April ruling.