By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BUCHAREST/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis says he won’t resign on December 21 as planned but will leave after a new head of state is elected.
He addressed the nation late Friday after the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections, citing irregularities after security services suggested pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round due to Russian interference.
He was to face liberal Elena Lasconi in a runoff on Sunday, December 8. Lasconi is fiercely pro-NATO and pro-European Union and could become Romania’s first woman president. She condemned the court ruling, saying it “tramples Romania’s democracy.”
New presidential elections are now due in February or March after a new government is installed following Sunday’s parliamentary vote, which was held separately from the presidential poll.
“According to the Romanian constitution, the president continues his mandate until the new president takes his oath. So when the new president will be invested, that is when I leave as president,” Iohannis explained in televised remarks.
He said he has no ambition to become the next prime minister. Iohannis said he agreed with the Constitutional Court ruling. Following [the first round of the presidential] elections, I started receiving notes from intelligence services about some strange things,” Iohannis recalled.
“I received the reports, and I was very worried about what I read, so I convened the Romanian National Security Council,” he explained. “The conclusions were grave.”
ILLEGAL SUPPORT
He said it became clear that Georgescu benefitted from “massive illegal election support” despite declaring “zero spending on his election campaign.”
Iohannis said he “received information from services” that the pro-Russia candidate “was illegally supported by a foreign country, which constitutes a national security matter.”
Georgescu ran a successful campaign on the social media platform TikTok.
His popularity exploded in the weeks before the vote, with the candidate gaining tens of millions of views days before the first round, apparently in a campaign backed by Moscow.
Iohannis’ words confirmed Romania’s intelligence agencies’ statements that Georgescu’s win was “not a natural outcome” and that a coordinated social media campaign by a “state actor” artificially propped up his victory.
The documents showed that an alleged pre-organized sleeper network suddenly became active two weeks before the election.
Romanian intelligence concluded that the network used methods typical of a state actor in recruiting and coordinating with others through the messaging platform Telegram.
1 MILLION SPENT
The documents also found that almost 1 million euros ($1.056,000) was spent during the campaign by an individual who supported Georgescu’s candidacy.
Georgescu, who raised eyebrows with his fringe beliefs and expressed support of Romanian World War II Nazi leaders, claimed he had no campaign budget and was helped through volunteers.
On Friday, he said the Constitutional Court decision “is more than a legal controversy. It is basically a formalized coup d’état.”
In televised remarks, he said: “Dear friends, we are in the Christmas fast, and today is St. Nicholas Day. On this day, the Romanian state has taken democracy and trampled it underfoot.”
Yet government leaders in the European Union and the United States view him as a danger to Romania’s fragile democracy, which was introduced after the 1989 Romanian Revolution, following decades of dictatorship.
Despite the turmoil, President Iohannis said, “Romania is a safe, solid country” that will overcome the latest hardships.
Romania is a crucial member state of the NATO military alliance as it has a long border with war-torn Ukraine. It has supported Ukraine with military aid to halt the Russian offensive.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a sweeping series of airstrikes across southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley on Monday, targeting what it described as Hezbollah sites used for rocket launches and the production and storage of strategic weapons. The attacks marked one of the most extensive Israeli operations in Lebanon in months, killing at least three Hezbollah operatives in the past 24 hours, according to the military.
Residents on Luzon Island, the largest and most populated island of the Philippines, assessed the damage early Monday after a sleepless night when Super Typhoon Fung-wong, locally known as Uwan, killed at least two people and injured several others.
More than 50 prominent Christian leaders are calling on President Trump to directly confront Syria’s new president about the ongoing persecution of religious minorities when the two leaders meet Monday at the White House, marking a historic first for U.S.-Syria relations.
In a decisive break from Democratic obstruction that has paralyzed the federal government for over a month, the U.S. Senate on Sunday night voted 60-40 to advance legislation ending the record-breaking 40-day government shutdown, marking a significant victory for Republican fiscal discipline and President Donald Trump’s healthcare reform agenda.
A group of Hamas fighters trapped inside tunnels on the Israeli-controlled side of the Rafah ceasefire line have vowed not to surrender to Israeli forces, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced Sunday, in a move that could jeopardize the fragile month-old ceasefire in Gaza.
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have uncovered an extraordinary 2,700-year-old pottery fragment inscribed with Assyrian cuneiform near the Temple Mount — the first written evidence of direct contact between the Assyrian Empire and the Kingdom of Judah ever discovered in the city. The find, announced by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), offers striking confirmation of the biblical narrative of King Hezekiah’s resistance to Assyrian domination recorded in II Kings 18.
Iranian officials are warning of imminent water rationing—and even the potential evacuation of Tehran—as the nation faces its worst drought in nearly a century.