Prosecutors in Romania have opened a criminal case against Calin Georgescu, an ultranationalist politician who in November won the first round of a presidential election only to have his victory annulled when the Constitutional Court ordered a redo of the vote.
The start of criminal proceedings against Mr. Georgescu, a fierce critic of NATO and the European Union, was announced by prosecutors on Wednesday. The move came just two weeks after Vice President JD Vance cited Romania in a speech at a Munich security conference as an example of what he said was Europe’s “retreat” from free speech and democracy.
Romania’s Constitutional Court canceled the election last year just two days before a December runoff vote that Mr. Georgescu had been seen as well positioned to win. It said it wanted “to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process.”
The court’s intervention came after Romania’s security service released declassified intelligence reports that pointed to possible Russian interference in the election campaign but provided no solid evidence of that.
Mr. Georgescu stunned Romania’s political establishment by winning a first round of voting on Nov. 24, aided by a flood of videos on TikTok and other social media. A former soil expert with the United Nations, Mr. Georgescu was largely unknown in Romania at the start of the election campaign last year.
The videos promoting Mr. Georgescu ahead of the November vote were not labeled as campaign material, a violation of Romania’s election law, and it has not been explained how his campaign managed to dominate social media so suddenly and thoroughly.
The cancellation of the vote result in November made Mr. Georgescu a martyred hero to anti-establishment political forces in Romania and also right-wing Americans, including Mr. Vance and Elon Musk, who has taken to social media several times to denounce his treatment.
Mr. Georgescu has not been arrested but placed under “judicial control,” a status that bars him from leaving Romania and using social media. Police officers on Thursday visited his home near Bucharest, Romania’s capital, to check on his whereabouts and activities.
Mr. Georgescu was on his way to register as a candidate for the upcoming redo of the canceled election when police stopped his vehicle in traffic in Bucharest on Wednesday morning and said he needed to report to prosecutors. After hours of questioning, prosecutors said in a statement that they had started “criminal proceedings” against him for six crimes.
Those include “incitement to actions against the constitutional order,” the “communication of false information” and involvement in the establishment of an organization “with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character.”
Tudorel Toader, a former constitutional court judge, told Romanian news outlets that the charges were extremely serious and that Mr. Georgescu, if brought to trial and convicted, could face up to 25 years in jail.
Denouncing the prosecutors’ action, Mr. Georgescu said in a message to his supporters that he was “fighting this system that wants us in slavery.” In a reference to Romania’s past as a brutal police state under Nicolae Ceausescu before the 1989 collapse of communism, he added: “The communist Bolshevik system is continuing its heinous abuse.”
The saga has also stirred unease among some Romanians who have no sympathy for Mr. Georgescu’s opposition to NATO and his claims to be fighting evil globalist forces at the behest of God.
Funky Citizens, a respected pro-democracy activist group, issued a statement saying that “although we believe it was necessary for the authorities to use the available legal tools to understand in detail and inform the public about the causes that led to the cancellation of the 2024 presidential elections, the measures seem to come very late.”
Long delays by the authorities in explaining their actions against Mr. Georgescu, the group said, “leave room for speculation and conspiracy theories to grow without being countered by official information, which only weakens the fragile trust that remains in state institutions.”
Andrada Lautaru contributed reporting.
