“Romania is a warning bell: Radicalisation and disinformation can happen all over Europe with harmful consequences,” added Hayer, an ally of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Hayer’s appeal comes only two days after Georgescu’s shock victory. He had no party backing and polls had failed to pick up on his popularity — though researchers are now zeroing on a major TikTok campaign he led in the days leading up to the election.
“We believed that Tiktok was misused and was led to be misused by him and an army of fake accounts that were used for his purpose,” said Bogdan Manolea, executive director of the Romanian campaign group, Association for Technology and Internet.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Tuesday said funding for Georgescu’s campaign on TikTok needed to be reviewed. “It’s a system, I don’t know how legal it is, I understood how the system was used. The source of financing, in my opinion, is to be followed, ‘follow the money.'”
There is, however, no proof at this stage of involvement by Russia or other state actors.
Manolea added TikTok should have seen the “wave of thousands of fake accounts” and that the company should be responsible for that under the DSA.
