Romania’s Constitutional Court clarified on Monday, the 7th October, that nationalist candidate Diana Sosoaca’s pro-Russian, anti-EU and anti-NATO views barred her from standing in the upcoming presidential elections, following the decision announced on Saturday to remove the leader of the ultra-nationalist SOS Romania party from the list of candidates, reports Reuters.
Romania, an EU and NATO member state, will hold two rounds of presidential elections on the 24th of November and the 8th of December, with parliamentary elections in between.
According to the Constitution, any Romanian citizen over 35 years of age who has not been convicted has the right to run for the presidency.
However, the court said that, if elected, Sosoaca’s public opinions would prevent her from fulfilling her presidential promise to respect the constitution and protect democracy.
The nine-member court voted by five to exclude Sosoaca from running, with two voting against and two absent.
The majority, including four judges appointed by the ruling Social Democrats, said that her remarks “constitute sufficient grounds to indicate that, as a presidential candidate, Diana Sosoaca questions and disregards her duty to respect the constitution by publicly calling for the abrogation of the country’s fundamental values and choices, namely EU and NATO membership”.
Sosoaca was elected to the European Parliament in June and is well known for her anti-Semitic and pro-Russian views. She has previously called on the EU to stop supplying arms to Kyiv and has even suggested that Romania should annex some Ukrainian territories.
But some politicians have said that barring her from standing in elections undermines the rule of law and sets a dangerous precedent for the exclusion of candidates.
Following the decision, Sosoaca expressed an outraged and anti-Semitic reaction in which she accused the EU, the Jews, the Americans and the French, as well as the court itself, of conspiring against her without any evidence and said on her Facebook live that the EU, the Jews and the Americans “planned to rig the Romanian elections before they had even started”.
In an interview with Politico, Sosoaca criticised Romania’s Constitutional Court, calling it a “politicised institution” staffed by judges who were members of political parties and elected by politicians in parliament.