As it prepares to hold a rerun of its presidential election on May 4, Romania is improbably at ground zero of a new global struggle. A first effort at balloting in November 2024 was won by a Euroskeptic Kremlin backer after election interference, causing Romania’s Constitutional Court to annul the election, ban the candidate, and prompt a redo.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance sharply criticized Romania’s decision. “Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency,” Vance said.

As it prepares to hold a rerun of its presidential election on May 4, Romania is improbably at ground zero of a new global struggle. A first effort at balloting in November 2024 was won by a Euroskeptic Kremlin backer after election interference, causing Romania’s Constitutional Court to annul the election, ban the candidate, and prompt a redo.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance sharply criticized Romania’s decision. “Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency,” Vance said.

“You don’t have shared values if you cancel elections because you don’t like the result. … If you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up,” he said in another speech.

Romania’s drama is part of a broader global story: Democratic institutions are being undermined around the world not just by external threats but from within. Elected leaders use the legitimacy of the ballot box to defang judicial oversight, muzzle the press, and eliminate accountability. This is not democracy at work—it is elections being weaponized to eliminate the guardrails that prevent corruption and despotism.

The Constitutional Court—a body whose members are appointed, not elected—embodies the post-communist elite consensus that has shaped Romania’s institutions. Moreover, the country’s two dominant parties, the center-left Social Democrats and center-right National Liberals, which have generally traded power since the fall of communism and are widely viewed as elite pillars, also rallied behind the annulment in horror at the Kremlin-aligned candidate’s success.

Romania’s surge of “elite” intervention—particularly in canceling a Russian-influenced election—has rendered the country an example of what U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies see as a global elite conspiracy to control outcomes and suppress “the people.”

Romania has become a convenient rhetorical........

© Foreign Policy