Last year’s Romanian presidential election saw the rise of Calin Georgescu, an “independent” candidate who made it into the second round. His unexpected advance to the runoff election, where he was set to face pro-EU and pro-NATO Elena Lasconi, raised concerns among observers due to Georgescu’s favorable stance toward Russia.
As someone who was expected to receive minimal support in the first round, Georgescu ran on a political platform boosted by an enormous number of messages on social media, notably on TikTok, supporting his bid for the presidency.
Romanian officials said TikTok failed to label posts supporting Georgescu as “politically motivated.” That laid the foundation for the populist candidate’s rise. On the other hand, his rivals’ contents were properly labeled as “politically oriented.”
For the first time in the country’s democratic history, the Romanian Constitutional Court decided to annul the runoff election when it was due to take place in about two days.
The decision came after Romanian President Klaus Iohannis declassified several intelligence documents about Georgescu’s campaign investigation. It indicated that a large part of pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts’ contents were coordinated through a Telegram channel.
The investigation also revealed that many Romanian influencers have allegedly been paid to support Georgescu’s bid. The pro-Russia candidate denied having any campaign expenses, despite Romanian law requiring that electoral campaign expenditures be declared.
One of those influencers, Bogdan Peschir, is under investigation for allegedly donating US$1 million to an account promoting Georgescu.
Moreover, one of the intelligence files revealed what the Romanian Supreme Council of National Defense denounced as the “massive exposure” of Georgescu “based on preferential treatment by TikTok.”
In essence, the social media platform allegedly contravened its own policies on elections, particularly in regards to the prohibition of “paid promotions” and “political advertising” to “avoid interfering with voters.”
That is the reason Romanian officials and the EU Commission asked TikTok to clarify which measures it was adopting to “avoid the manipulation of information” and “mitigate the risks related to elections and pluralism of media.”
The Romanian case clearly exemplifies what most European politicians and citizens are failing to understand: TikTok’s outsized power to amplify specific voices, at the expense of others, poses a grave threat to democracy.
Although the social media platform defends itself by stating that it is “not owned or controlled by Beijing, since it is a private company,” the fact that it is an app made by Chinese in China should not be overlooked.
TikTok is extremely vulnerable to Chinese Communist Party demands, as Beijing is known for using private companies serve its goals. Those can be achieved through capturing data, surveilling users, and spreading false and misleading claims with the potential to undermine democracy and national security.
With regard to goals and interests, the past two years further demonstrated the convergence between China and Russia in the geopolitical arena, especially in the context of Beijing providing Moscow with dual-use components which are identified by the US and the EU as “high priority” items necessary for Russia’s war machine.
As China and Russia further intensify their common agenda aimed at destabilizing Western societies through “interference activities,” the EU should engage with Taiwan to tackle Russia’s hybrid threat tactics by learning from its experience in dealing with China’s “digital warfare.”
The two nations’ ambition to reorganize the global order through coordinated actions, which include cybersecurity threats, information manipulation and interference activities, must be met with a firmer stance by European countries.
Romania’s case could prove beneficial in understanding what steps authoritarian countries plan to take.
As researchers Ejazul Haq Ateed and Merve Suna Ozel Ozcan said in their paper titled A New Face of China: Sharp Power Strategy and its Global Effects, China and Russia aim to expand global influence by “distracting and manipulating information, rectifying its image and undermining adversaries.”
As TikTok could be used for influence operations, EU countries must tackle the challenges it poses by joining forces with like-minded countries such as the US, Taiwan, Canada or Australia in providing a renewed framework to prevent risks to their democratic existence.
It would imply setting up policies aimed at avoiding situations such as the presidential elections in Romania, since “prevention is better than the cure.”
Michele Maresca is an analyst at the online international law journal Il Caffe Geopolitico and the think tank Geopol 21.
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