Greenland, coveted by Donald Trump’s US and Xi Jinping’s China, urgently passed a law on February 4, designed to “safeguard the political integrity” of the Danish autonomous territory by limiting foreign donations to political parties and individuals, ahead of the March 11 legislative elections. At the beginning of February, Poland presented a new program called the “Electoral Umbrella,” designed to protect the presidential election, the first round of which has been scheduled for May 18. “Online activity will be monitored in a way that prevents foreign interference,” said Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who explicitly called out Russia in his statement. Ahead of its February 23 federal elections, Germany, which has become caught between interference by Russian actors and by Elon Musk in favor of the far-right AfD party, said it has tested the digital platforms X, TikTok and YouTube to prevent possible threats to the electoral process. All over Europe, panic is mounting.

Gone are the days when sham elections in autocracies attracted attention! Observers’ attention has now turned to democracies, which have been targeted by increasingly sophisticated digital manipulation campaigns that have proven capable of altering votes. The annulment of the second round of Romania’s presidential election, decided by the country’s Constitutional Court on December 6, 2024, has served as a shocking wake-up call. For the first time, a major election was brutally interrupted, after a pro-Russian candidate came out on top in a country that is fundamentally pro-European. Thrust to the top spot in voting results for the first electoral round, held on November 24, 2024, with 23% of the vote (over 2 million), Calin Georgescu, 62, who called for a total halt to Romanian aid to Ukraine, had not taken part in any debates, nor even, according to him, invested a single leu – the national currency – in the campaign.

The sudden popularity of Georgescu, a man who likes to imitate Vladimir Putin by posting photos of himself sparring with judo partners, swimming or riding horses, owes everything to social media, and in particular to TikTok, which is particularly popular in the country: There are 9 million users of the platform among Romania’s 19 million residents. According to the Romanian intelligence services, a combination of videos was associated with keywords and then shared – for a hidden fee – by over a hundred influencers, who, in total, had more than 8 million active subscribers, had reached such a level of virality that, from November 13 to 26, 2024, the name “Georgescu” was ninth-ranked worldwide among the main trends in content promotion. Almost 25,000 TikTok accounts, backed by the app’s content recommendation algorithm, had become particularly active on the issue over those two weeks.

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