Romania’s constitutional court has annulled the result of first round of voting in the presidential election.
It means the process will be restarted from scratch, with the government due to decide a date for a new vote.
The results of that first round saw Calin Georgescu, an almost unknown far-right Nato-sceptic who has previously praised Vladimir Putin, win the most votes.
The court said it made the move “to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process”.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said the court’s decision to annul was “the only correct decision”.
Judges of the Constitutional Court said they had received requests to annul the result, citing intelligence documents that were declassified this week detailing allegations of Russian influence on social media.
The judges of the court met on Friday morning, although they had announced the previous night that they would not discuss new information regarding possible external influence on the elections until the second round of voting.
The law stipulates that, in the event of the annulment of the elections, they should resume on the second Sunday after the date of the annulment – which would have meant on 22 December.
However, the court has decided to ask the government to resume the entire electoral process, and therefore the electoral campaign.
