By Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST (Reuters) -The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Romania’s far-right presidential candidate to overturn a domestic court decision to annul a December presidential election.
Calin Georgescu was the frontrunner after the first round of the Nov. 24 presidential election. However, Romania’s highest court annulled the ballot two days before the second round in December, citing allegations of Russian interference in his favour, which Moscow has denied.
Georgescu, a critic of NATO who has praised Romania’s 1930s fascist leaders, turned to Europe’s top human rights court after failing to reverse the decision by Romania’s Constitutional Court in local courts.
The ECHR ruled that his appeal fell outside its remit.
An opinion poll released late on Monday showed Georgescu remained voters’ top choice ahead of a re-run of the vote in May, which could upend Romania’s pro-Western politics, pushing it closer to a belt of central European states with powerful Russia-friendly politicians, including Hungary and Slovakia.
Conducted by pollster Avangarde and cited by online news website hotnews.ro, the survey showed Georgescu gaining 38% of the vote in the first round on May 4.
Crin Antonescu, the proposed single candidate of the pro-European coalition government, would get 25% of the vote, followed by Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, who said he could run as an independent, who would get 17%.
The poll surveyed 1,354 people between Jan. 10-16 and has a margin of error of 2.6%.
It remains unclear whether Georgescu, who opposes Romanian support for neighbouring Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, will be allowed to run for president again. Last October the top court banned another far-right politician from running, in a move critics said overstepped judicial powers.
Romania is a member of both the EU and NATO.
Despite the support for Georgescu, a separate survey conducted by pollster Inscop for local civil rights NGO Funky Citizens showed on Tuesday 87.5% of Romanians believed the country should look to the EU, NATO and the United States for its political and military alliances, a 10 percentage point jump from a similar poll in Jan. 2022. Only 4.1% of Romanians believed Romania should look towards Russia.
“This shows that what happened in Romania isn’t related to… Romanians’ support for the Euro-Atlantic world, and has everything to do with domestic problems, economic, social, related to the lack of confidence in the political class,” INSCOP Research director Remus Stefureac said.
(Reporting by Luiza IlieEditing by Sharon Singleton and Gareth Jones)
