AUR/ECR MEPs: Presidential Election annulment - a dangerous european precedent

The AUR/ECR MEPs have submitted an open letter to the European Parliament stating that the decision of the Constitutional Court of Romania to annul the presidential elections represents "a dangerous European precedent" and a "brutal involvement in the elections in Romania and in the Romanian judicial process of the secret services".

The document signed by MEPs Gheorghe Piperea, Claudiu Târziu, Adrian-George Axinia, Şerban-Dimitrie Sturdza and Maria-Georgiana Teodorescu states: "The circumstances of the CCR's decision to annul the elections are terrible and present a huge risk of an anti-democratic precedent. Nothing guarantees, at this moment, that this precedent will not be repeated in Romania or in any other Member State of the European Union. The CCR has taken the initiative to pronounce the annulment of the elections. According to Romanian law, the CCR must be notified by a natural person or an institution in order to issue decisions. The only situation in which the CCR can notify itself is when there is an initiative to amend the Constitution. According to the Romanian Constitution, the CCR has the authority to oversee the conduct of presidential elections and to confirm the results of the vote, but not the authority to annul them. Based on Law no. 370/2004, the CCR can annul the first or second round of the presidential elections, ordering their repetition, but it cannot annul the entire electoral process. We recall that, on December 3, the CCR had already validated the elections in the first round. In a completely arbitrary manner and even in violation of its own jurisprudence, the CCR annulled the elections, citing "information notes" from the Romanian secret services that could result in the involvement of a "state actor" in the elections in Romania. There was no evidence at the time of the decision to annul the elections (December 6, 2024), nor is there at this time, to reveal electoral fraud. Given the war in Ukraine, as well as the crucial role of Romania, a NATO member, in managing the geopolitical consequences of this war, the CCR decision of December 6, 2024, unsupported by evidence, raises a major issue of security and trust in the Romanian authorities and in the Romanian State, as a partner and ally of the EU and NATO member states".

The signatories of the open letter addressed to the European Parliament state that the respective intelligence notes from the secret services are not only imprecise in nature, but also appear to have been produced pro-causally, during the time that elapsed between the decision to validate (December 3) and the decision to annul (December 6) the elections. They argue that if there had been real evidence of the involvement of the unnamed "state actor" (obviously, this is Russian espionage), it is obvious that the CCR would have been able to invalidate the elections as early as December 3, but it did not do so until December 6, 2024, when it was clear that the Romanian people would not vote according to the expectations of the Romanian establishment.

The open letter also states: "The first extremely serious aspect of the CCR's decision to annul the elections is the brutal involvement of the secret services in the Romanian elections and in the Romanian judicial process. In 2019, the same CCR had annulled the justice protocols with the secret services, as they violated the Constitution. Now, the CCR has violated its own jurisprudence. From the perspective of the rule of law and democracy, the precedent created is extremely dangerous, tantamount to a coup d'etat. There is no reason for EU member states to believe that such a precedent could not be repeated in Romania, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland or Greece, for example. Through precarious reasoning, the CCR considers that voters were manipulated through tik tok to vote for a candidate, as if the Chinese platform had tricked voters into voting in a certain way. This precarious reasoning not only infantilizes a number of 2.1 million voters who were allegedly manipulated, but also nullifies the remaining 7.4 million votes, theoretically unmanipulated."

AUR/ECR MEPs consider that the most serious aspect of the CCR's decision to annul the elections is the entrustment of an ad hoc and sine die presidential mandate in favor of Klaus Werner Iohannis, whose mandate as President of Romania expires on December 21, 2024.

"Without having been notified by anyone for this purpose and without having any competence under the Constitution or the law, the CCR found that the provisions of the Romanian Constitution that allow the extension of the mandate until the election of another president are applicable. The Romanian Constitution does not allow the extension of the mandate of a sitting president except in the event of war or catastrophe. The extension is granted by Parliament, by organic law. There is no such law. There are no such reasons. As of December 22, 2024, Romania will have an illegitimate president. Within the european institutions, including those with co-legislative and defense or diplomatic attributions, Romania will be represented by an illegitimate president. From the perspective of the European legal construction and the principle of representative democracy, such a situation is intolerable", argue the authors of the open letter in the quoted text.

Finally, they draw attention to art. 2 of the Romanian Constitution, which is similar to that of the French Constitution and which stipulates that national sovereignty belongs to the Romanian people and is exercised through representatives resulting from free and fair elections ("and not through arbitrary authorities or secret services" - according to the signatories of the open letter), no group or individual having the right to exercise this sovereignty in their own interest.

(C)