The surprise first-round victory of political outsider Călin Georgescu in the first round of the presidential elections sent shockwaves throughout Romania and Europe, leading to Valérie Hayer, head of the liberal Renew Europe group, calling TikTok CEO to come before the European Parliament and answer questions.

Călin Georgescu obtained roughly 23% of votes in the November 24 elections, followed by reformist candidate Elena Lasconi (USR) with 19.17%. Virtually unknown although active in politics for decades, Georgescu based his campaign on TikTok, rising in popularity sharply in a few weeks despite allegedly having no party backing or funding. And this has raised questions about how the social media app boosted the Romanian candidate's chances to winning the elections. 

"We call on the CEO of TikTok to come to speak in this house and to ensure his platform conducted to no infringement under the DSA," Valérie Hayer, head of the liberal Renew Europe group, said during a press conference, referring to the Digital Services Act, Europe's rulebook for online content.

"Romania is a warning bell: radicalization and disinformation can happen all over Europe with harmful consequences," added Hayer, an ally of French president Emmanuel Macron, cited by Politico.

Campaign Funding Suspicions

Călin Georgescu stated that he had zero funding for his campaign, and dozens of surveys conducted before the elections missed his rise. Most surveys placed prime minister and Social Democrat (PSD) leader Marcel Ciolacu, who ended up in third, in first place. 

TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, does not allow political advertising. However, this time that rule was "largely ineffective," said Keith Kiely, coordinator for the Bulgarian Romanian Observatory on Digital Media. The platform had a "significant influence" in the elections, he added. 

Many of Georgescu’s voters admit to not knowing too much about him.

"We believed that TikTok was misused and was led to be misused by him and an army of fake accounts that were used for his purpose," said Bogdan Manolea, executive director of the Romanian campaign group, Association for Technology and Internet. According to him, the social media platform should have picked up on that level of sudden activity.

Meanwhile, responding to election interference concerns, PM Marcel Ciolacu said funding for Georgescu's campaign on TikTok needed to be reviewed.

"It's a system, I don't know how legal it is, but I understood how the system was used. The source of financing, in my opinion, is to be followed, 'follow the money,” he said.

Regarding the potential banning of TikTok in Romania, Ciolacu said that such precedents should be set. “I lived during communism, and I don’t think we should create such precedents. Whether we like it or not, in terms of electoral impact or societal influence, we must uphold freedom of expression and avoid introducing measures like these,” he said, cited by Digi24.

The 'TikTok Candidate'

Hard-liners say that Călin Georgescu benefitted from help from a large network of fake accounts that could only come from Russian sources. There is, however, no proof at this stage of involvement by Russia or other state actors. 

According to Valentin Jucan, Vice President of Romania’s National Audiovisual Council (CNA), there are suspicions that “TikTok's algorithms amplified electoral content favoring a single candidate, creating an imbalance in the electoral competition and endangering political pluralism.” He further noted that TikTok failed to evaluate how disinformation and unlabeled content were propagated during the electoral campaign, according to Biziday.

Expert Forum, a think tank set up by well-known experts in public policy and public governance reform, submitted a complaint to the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) regarding the declaration and legality of revenues and expenditures in the electoral campaign of candidate Călin Georgescu.

“We question how it is possible to run an electoral campaign without any declared financial contributions. Costs for the financial trustee’s services, video editing/online promotion services, and other campaign management expenses must have been incurred. We request that you verify whether these costs were covered by third parties,” the organization mentioned.

EFOR also conducted an analysis suggesting a coordinated political and electoral promotion effort in favor of Călin Georgescu on TikTok. Many materials shared on TikTok, including videos by influencers, were not marked as electoral in nature. It also found that TikTok allowed indirect promotion of political messages via influencers without proper labeling and failed to provide the necessary transparency to identify sponsors or sources of electoral content. 

“The second-round presidential campaign must be conducted under conditions of legality and transparency, which are currently in question,” EFOR says in a press release.

In response, TikTok set up an election center inside the app to provide reliable election information and partnered with a local NGO to boost digital literacy and counter disinformation.

"These highly speculative reports about the Romanian elections are inaccurate and misleading, as most candidates have established a TikTok presence and the winners campaigned on other digital platforms beyond ours," TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino said. 

radu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Inquam Photos | Octav Ganea and Michele Ursi | Dreamstime.com)