Democracy Dies In The EU: Romania Edition

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Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

If you were hoping this Christmas for more clarity on the rules of the “rules-based international order,” you’re in luck. Recent events in Romania provide plenty.  Judges there canceled the results of the recent election in Romania because a candidate who favored better ties with Russia won. The decision was based on bogus intel from the state intelligence services, and naturally Brussels and Washington backed the move. While the EU has for years used all sorts of pressure and threats to get member states to continue to support Project Ukraine, the overturning of the election in Romania marks a clear escalation of tactics and is likely a harbinger of what’s to come.

Let’s start with a timeline of events in Romania and then look at why the country is so important to NATO Black Sea plans, as well as the larger significance of the election cancellation. I’ll be focusing primarily on the involvement of actors outside Romania as I’m not all that familiar with the country’s political scene, but I think we have at least a few experts in the commentariat who can hopefully offer more domestic perspective.

Timeline

The weeks running up to the election: a campaign called #BalanceAndIntegrity begins on TikTok. Roughly 130 influencers follow a similar script to make videos describing qualities of a future unnamed president. Some of the influencers do, however, write in the comments of the video: “Călin Georgescu.”

Nov. 24: The presidential election. Georgescu — a relative unknown who runs on a Christian conservative, economic populist and non-interventionist policy towards Project Ukraine — surprisingly comes out on top. Disaffected working class voters back him strongly as he wins more than 2 million votes (23 percent) in the first round.  As no candidate achieved an absolute majority, a second round was to be held on Dec. 8.

Nov. 28: Romania’s Supreme Country Defense Council (CSAT) announces that “cyber attacks with the aim of influencing the correctness of the electoral process” took place and, separately, that “a candidate for the presidential elections benefited from a massive exposure due to the preferential treatment that the TikTok platform granted him by not marking him as a political candidate.”

Despite CSAT alleging that “some state and non-state actors, in particular the Russian Federation,” were behind cyber attacks, Romania’s Special Telecommunication Service (STS), a military agency which is tasked with securing the communication infrastructure for the electoral process, said that no cyberattack was spotted during the first round of the presidential elections.

Dec 5: The secret service of the Ministry of Interior submits a note to the Constitutional Court of Romania (CSAT) in which it says TikTok campaigns were presented to the public as a “campaign aimed at raising awareness about the importance of voting” but in reality were supportive for Georgescu.

Dec. 6: Just two days ahead of the second round vote Georgescu looked sure to win, the Constitutional Court of Romania annuls the results of the first round of the election, claiming that a Russian influence operation impacted the vote. A new election will supposedly happen in the Spring.

Dec. 16: The European Commission announces it is opening a formal proceeding against TikTok over its role in Romania’s election. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen takes the rare step of publicly commenting on an investigation saying the following:

“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act [DSA] by failing to tackle such risks.”

Dec. 19: The 27 leaders of the European Union meet in Brussels. The summit is dominated by Ukraine, but Romanian President Klaus Iohannis who is staying on as president due to the annulled election is welcomed with open arms and offers his insight into the Russian menace:

EU leaders thanked Iohannis for his warnings, and everyone went back to making bold proclamations about “supporting” Ukraine and the threats posed by Putin evidenced by his TikTok wizardry in Romania.

There was a problem, however. A bombshell Dec. 21 report from the Romanian investigative media outlet Snoop.ro revealed that the TikTok campaign allegedly orchestrated by the Russians that threw Romanian democracy out of whack was actually funded by the centrist National Liberal Party.  To sum up:

The firm hired by the PNL, Kensington Communication, is now saying it will file a criminal complaint for judicial authorities to investigate the possible diversion of its campaign in favour of an “extremist” candidate. From a Kensington statement:

“Kensington Communication will file a criminal complaint so that the competent authorities can investigate the hijacking, bot attack and/or cloning of the campaign carried out by Kensington, at the behest of the PNL, carried out through the Fame Up Platform, in favor of an extremist candidate.”

Kensington is owned by Răzvan Săndulescu and Cătălin Dumitru who I’m not turning up much information on. Maybe readers more familiar with the Romanian political landscape can comment.

While the media spent weeks suggesting that the alleged influence operation in Romania was “eerily similar” to alleged Russian campaigns in Ukraine and Moldova, it turns out it’s much closer to the Clinton campaign’s pied piper strategy in 2016, which led to a shock loss and subsequent blaming of Russia for that defeat. And it continues even after being debunked:

One key difference, obviously, is that in Romania the election was formerly overturned while in the US Trump was greeted into office by Russiagate.

It’s worth remembering that even though the PNL funded the TikTok campaign and blamed it on Russia there’s still no evidence that it swung the election.

And there’s little attention paid to the economic fallout in Romania from Project Ukraine. While Romania wasn’t hit as hard as other European countries on energy due to its own supplies and ability to continue to import Russian gas via the Turkstream pipeline, the country is still forced to grapple with inflation, Black Sea fishing and tourism difficulties due to the conflict, and higher prices for other products that used to be imported from Russia such as steel products, iron, wood, cement, and paper. Meanwhile, the government in Romania has been pushing the military budget higher.

Romania’s Importance for NATO

The EU, which has already lost so much — it has destroyed its own economy and international standing, restricted freedoms, reordered all its priorities, and has willfully subjected the entire EU project to NATO — continues to double down, and it can all be traced back to Ukraine and Russia.

In this case Georgescu cannot be allowed to win because he takes the common sense approach that confrontation with Moscow does much more harm to Romanians than to Russia.

And Romania is simply too important to NATO and the effort to weaken Russia. Washington and Brussels are already dealing with wayward governments in Hungary and Slovakia, but Romania is a different animal.

Like Hungary and Slovakia it borders Ukraine, and while providing little military support of its own, it is the second most important hub, after Poland. German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has a facility in Satu Mare to repair Western equipment donated to Ukraine.

It also has more geographic importance due to its location on the Black Sea and is a major part of the US strategy there.

The US National Security Council (NSC) is currently working to formalize a Black Sea security and development strategy across government agencies, but the current National Defense Authorization Act already outlines several pillars of that strategy that can effectively be boiled down to “keep Russia and China out and the US and NATO in.”

What that envisions is an arc of “rules-based order” states from the Caspian to the Adriatic that would allow the US to exercise control over the movement of energy and goods through the region, and to the South Caucasus, which is positioned at the intersection of burgeoning East-West and North-South transport corridors. It’s one major part of the US bid for global dominance, which seeks to control key maritime corridors and choke points.

In January, Türkiye, Bulgaria and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding in İstanbul establishing the Mine Countermeasures Naval Group in the Black Sea, which will oversee demining operations. There was hope from some in the West that this could be a way to sidestep Türkiye’s objections to NATO warships sailing into the Black Sea, but that hasn’t happened. Still, Romania faces pressure to build up its naval forces, although that also hasn’t been going well. From the Polish Institute for International Affairs:

Since 1989, Romania has only acquired two, old Type-22 frigates, bought from the UK 20 years ago without missile systems, and a domestically-built corvette in the 1990s. In 2023, Romania bought two minehunters decommissioned from the Royal Navy. Romania is strengthening its neglected navy on an ad hoc basis. It has asked for U.S. help to upgrade the Type-22 frigates and has ordered two H215M surface combatant helicopters for them from Airbus, to be built at the factory in Braşov. It announced the rearmament with NSM missiles of three missile corvettes and the intention to order two patrol vessels in a fast-track procedure from the Galaţi shipyard owned by the Dutch firm Damen. Romania also joined the PESCO programme for the construction of patrol corvettes, which, if successful, means the first vessels would be built after 2030. These measures are intended to fill the gap caused by the cancellation in 2023 of a €1.2 billion programme to build four corvettes  and the modernisation of the Type-22 frigates in a Romanian shipyard after the Ministry of Defence failed to agree with the French Naval Group selected in the tender and did not enter into negotiations with Damen, whose offer was second..

Romania is seeking to rebuild its submarine force. It is negotiating with the Naval Group—despite past bad experiences—to build two Scorpène-type submarines in France for around €2 billion. Their commissioning would be a challenge for the Romanian Navy, as it has not had such vessels in the line since 1996, and it would take up to 10 years to rebuild the technical facilities and to train crews.

Romania is also the site of the $2.7 billion expansion of Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase to make it the largest one in Europe. An interesting thought:

The US has expanded its military presence in Romania to brigade size, and is pushing for NATO forward defense in Romania to include a multinational combined arms formation focused on the Danube Delta.

On the energy front, Black Sea Oil & Gas, controlled by US private equity firm Carlyle Group LP, launched Romania’s first offshore development in three decades in 2022.

Last year, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and discussed US energy cooperation with Romania. Some highlights:

O’Brien detailed Project Phoenix, a partnership between Romania and the United States designed to increase the region’s energy security. O’Brien said the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank of the United States signed letters of interest totaling four billion dollars “to deploy a small modular reactor project in Romania.” At the same time, littoral states are working to boost their own energy security, for example with offshore energy projects underway in Bulgarian, Romanian, and Turkish waters. Yet Russia is determined to keep its energy dominance, and with a penchant for malign influence operations, will likely attempt to scuttle the United States’ efforts to help the Black Sea’s littoral states. The United States and its regional allies must be prepared with an effective strategic communications response if Russia unleashes malign influence operations—including a strategic disinformation campaign—designed to stop Project Phoenix. Such campaigns may not be unprecedented, as some European officials suspect (although without clear proof) that Russia helped finance protests against Chevron projects in Lithuania and Romania in the 2010s.

EU Courts and the “Rule of Law”

The EU has long used lawfare, economic sabotage, and threats to bend national elections in its direction. And even if the outcome didn’t go the way Brussels wanted, it usually had enough “tools” as von der Leyen calls them to force the new government to fall in line.

The actions in Romania, however, mark something altogether different. In just a few short years we’ve gone from tools to pressure elected representatives to tools to simply cancel election results because of TikTok videos, and the use of the courts to enforce Brussels’ idea of “democracy” is noteworthy.

The courts throughout EU states play a major role in Brussels exerting control over the bloc and the erosion of sovereignty. The European Commission has the power to cite “rule of law” deficiencies in member states, which can put in jeopardy EU cohesion and recovery funds earmarked for the state in violation. In theory, the warning is supposed to be about democratic standards, corruption, the independence of the judicial system and the safety of journalists. In reality, the threat to cut off some EU funds is used as a form of financial blackmail to keep bloc countries from straying from neoliberal orthodoxy and NATO priorities. We can see evidence of the politicization of “rule of law” in the cases of Hungary and Poland. The Commission used billions in withheld funds earlier this year to bribe Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán into relenting on money he was holding up for Project Ukraine.

Poland’s rule of law problems with Brussels magically disappeared once loyal EU/NATO soldier Donald Tusk was elected prime minister last year — despite nearly identical issues with the media, for example, as under his predecessor.

Ultimately Brussels wants courts that are in line with its idea of democracy and a “Juristocratic” Europe rather than an expression of the “national will.” Over the years Brussels has worked to ensure that more power has been transferred to the courts in EU member states so that we now have the following: 

Ran Hirschl, a Yale University graduate and professor of Law and Political science at the University of Toronto, affirms that by transferring an ‘unprecedented amount of power from representative institutions to judiciaries’, Western regimes have established ‘juristocratical’ regimes. These regimes, Hirschl continues, are dominated by a ‘coalition of legal innovators’ determining ‘the timing, extent, and nature of constitutional reforms’ and who, ‘while they profess support for democracy (…), attempt to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics’.

The fact that these courts were used in such a blatant anti-democratic nature in Romania marks a major escalation from Brussels that previously relied on more discreet pressure campaigns.

Lawfare, economic sabotage, color revolutions, and threats. Across the EU — even in the bloc’s biggest countries like France, Italy, and Germany — efforts to subvert the voters’ will have been steadily increasing as economic problems mount and voter anger rises with governments that continue to dig deeper by clinging to the centrist dogma of neoliberalism and transatlanticism.

Gaining ground across the EU are parties that question the wisdom of Project Ukraine and ongoing belligerence towards Russia, China and whoever else Washington says is on the enemy list.

And more draconian measures are needed to keep the wolves at bay.

It’s entirely possible that Romania is just the start of annulled elections as the neoliberal war champions who call themselves the “center” would no doubt love the power to cancel elections wherever they see fit.

Trial Run for Upcoming Elections in Europe?

Politico announces as much in a Dec. 17 piece. Under the subhead “Germany is up next” the author casually tosses in the following:

But the real nightmare scenario that European Parliament members voiced concerns about on Tuesday is for disinformation to go rogue when Germans head to the polls in February…Earlier in December, the Commission ordered TikTok to retain all data related to election risk management for four months, starting Nov. 24 and running through March — capturing what will happen in the run-up to the German election.

“Election risk management.” Is the EU really worried about the content on TikTok and its lack of political content labels or is it more of a useful scapegoat when democracy goes wrong in the eyes of the Brussels centrists?

It would be a shocker if the political upstarts in Germany — the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on the right and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on the left — are able to pull off a result resembling Georgescu’s. Here’s a look at current polling in Germany:

That’s a daunting deficit to overcome, but February is a long ways off, and who knows if and by how much polls might be accidentally or deliberately undercounting AfD and BSW support. The AfD has the threat of a ban hanging over its head purportedly due to Nazi elements in its ranks, but one look at who the EU and US supports in Ukraine tells you that the real reason is because it wants peaceful ties with Russia because that’s in the interest of most Germans.

The Romania election is maybe the most egregious example yet of hypocrisy from the EU, which describes its conflict with Russia and “de-risking” from China as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism. It comes at the same time Brussels and Washington are struggling to orchestrate a color revolution in Georgia in order to overturn the recent election results there and force the country’s citizens to sacrifice in the Western plutocrats’ efforts to weaken Russia.

No doubt Georgia President and French spook Salome Zourabichvili who is saying she will not leave office when her term is up Dec. 29 will point to Romania as evidence of how democracy works in the EU — and should work in Georgia. That’s because Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis is staying in office for now due to the annulled election.

Meanwhile, Ursula celebrates Romanian democracy:

Whether she’s clueless or simply enjoys rubbing salt in fresh wounds matters little for Romanians and all Europeans who are having their rights steadily snatched away from them by Ursula and her benefactors.

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