Political advertising in the 2025 elections

Following their defeat in the 2024 presidential elections, the Romanian authorities rushed through Emergency Ordinance 1/2025, which regulates political advertising. The ordinance has been criticized for its lack of clarity and its potential to undermine freedom of expression. EFOR analyzed how the regulations on political advertising were applied in the May elections and is publishing statistics and conclusions on the effectiveness of these measures.

Context

• OUG 1/2025 was adopted on January 16, without any transparency. The ordinance was criticized from the outset, both for the way it was written and published, and for its content, particularly Articles 16 and 17. Among other things, the OUG failed to clearly define how the definition of a political actor applies and introduced penalties for platforms that the Romanian state would not have been able to enforce, as they were in contradiction with the Digital Services Act (DSA). The OUG introduced a regulation requiring platforms to remove content within five hours of notification by the AEP, a task that is questionable to say the least.
• This created a situation where anyone who posts a political opinion without being part of a competitor’s election campaign could be considered a political actor and fined up to 50,000 lei. This is a system that is extremely easy to abuse, as we have seen hundreds of requests submitted to the BEC by the AUR to sanction posts against the party or its opponent. Several organizations criticized the BEC’s first decisions in early April, as they had the potential to affect freedom of expression.
• The definition of a political actor was very broad, and the regulation applied to both paid advertising and posts that were not promoted with money, contrary to the spirit of the DSA, which refers to paid advertising or advertising linked to a campaign or a party. In some of the posts that were removed, the link to a campaign was not sufficiently proven. Furthermore, the BEC extended the interpretation on its own initiative, adding people who post more frequently or who have a more visible profile; these rules should have been established from the outset.
• According to the ODIHR report published after the second round of voting, all complaints related to BEC decisions were rejected by the Bucharest Court of Appeal (51), including 15 cases in which an advisory opinion was requested from the Court of Justice of the European Union on the definition of “political actor.” The fact that the courts rejected all complaints against the CEC’s decisions is not necessarily positive and may indicate the low effectiveness of the appeal mechanism.

Complaints related to the online campaign

• One of the major failures of this ordinance was that it significantly hampered the functioning of the BEC, both in terms of the broad mandate it was given and because there were actors who abused this mechanism.
  • 13% (532) of the decisions taken between April 4 and May 15, 2025 were based on complaints filed by the AUR. Of these, 170 were rejected.
  • On May 12, AUR Brașov filed nearly 400 complaints with the BEC, which represents a sustained effort and raises questions about the sincerity of the initiative. Not only did AUR send a large number of complaints, but we also identified other individuals—for example, Mr. A.S. has over 250 BEC decisions related to his name and possible derivatives. The name D.P. appears in nearly 300 decisions.
• Complaints to the BEC were handled by a small group of about 50 people, who were tasked with processing and verifying posts and preparing decisions for the BEC meeting, which made decisions on content. The BEC meetings were not public, contrary to good practice and transparency principles, so we cannot assess how collegial the decisions were, nor can we describe the process in detail. This technical group included representatives from several institutions such as the AEP, CNA, ANCOM, and DNSC. There remains an open discussion about the capacity of such a small number of people to deal with a flood of complaints. Also, the short time between the approval of the legislation and the elections did not allow much time for preparation.
• In total, for both rounds of voting, 52,031 complaints were registered, of which 1,258 were submitted by legal entities and 48,816 were submitted by individuals. Some of these complaints may contain a link, while others may include dozens of links. The BEC had no authority to take action on its own initiative, so all complaints were filed by individuals and legal entities. EFOR also filed several complaints related to unacknowledged political advertising on Facebook, and some of these complaints included dozens of links.
• Statistical data show that their number has increased progressively. The significant difference can also be seen in the number of complaints filed on May 4 and May 18, respectively.
  • On the day of the first round of elections, the Central Electoral Bureau received 310 complaints, of which 14 were submitted by legal entities and 296 by individuals.
  • On May 18, 2025, the BEC received 39,913 complaints. Of these, 6,268 were resolved, of which 71 were submitted by legal entities and 6,197 by individuals. The CEC consolidated some complaints, with the number of decisions taken by the office being lower than the number of complaints submitted.
  • The BEC forwarded 4,025 complaints to the IGPR because the materials referred to in the complaints contained photographs and/or video recordings of ballot papers, which is punishable by a fine.
  • It is clear that such a large number of complaints could not have been resolved. Even if many of them had been resolved, the materials would probably have been removed from the platforms too late to have any effect on election day.
• Many of the complaints were filed after the end of the election campaign.
  • According to the response received from the AEP following a request based on Law 544/2001, “by means of the classification report 53572C/BEC/P.R.2025 of 20.05.2025, in which it was found that the materials under analysis, uploaded on very large online platforms, were reported after the end of the election campaign for the second round of voting, and the other complaints concern issues that were not confirmed at the end of the electoral process, 28,805 complaints were archived.” Only three complaints were submitted by legal entities, and 28,802 by individuals.
  • The AEP also specified in its response to the request based on Law 544/2001 that “another 785 complaints were dismissed on the grounds that they were submitted after the end of the election campaign for the second round of voting, according to dismissal report no. 24616C/BEC/P.R.2025 of 18.05.2025.”
  • Another 30 complaints were dismissed because “the materials uploaded to the very large online platforms that are the subject of the complaints had lost their character as political advertising materials at the time of analysis by the BEC, and because some of the materials that are the subject of the complaints could not be accessed or lead to a user account on the very large online platforms.”
• Between April 4 and May 15, 2025, 4,023 decisions were published on the BEC website, of which 2,487 were admitted and 1,536 were rejected. After May 16, 1,862 decisions were published, of which 960 on May 16, 736 on May 17, 149 on May 18, and 17 decisions on May 19. In the case of decisions published after May 16, we cannot compile statistics because the name of the person who filed the complaint and the BEC’s resolution were not published.
• An analysis of some of the posts for which the BEC issued removal orders shows that some of this material is still online.

Lessons

• The problem of political advertising and influencing elections through more transparent or more opaque online campaigns cannot be addressed exclusively by a lever such as that defined by GEO 1. Of course, there must be a functional mechanism for complaints for the public, but it must be formulated transparently, in consultation with all stakeholders, and must be enforceable in practice, without leading to institutional blockages and human rights violations. The question, therefore, is whether we can invest resources more effectively to ensure the integrity of election campaigns and political life.
• To avoid the situation related to OUG 1/2025, we believe that the government should organize as broad a discussion as possible in the context of the entry into force of Regulation 900/2024 in October.
• Even if such reporting mechanisms exist, the role of platforms remains essential in removing material that is contrary to their own rules and national legislation. An institution or researcher is limited by access to data, understanding of the algorithm, and, of course, the ability to limit coordinated networks that promote inauthentic content.
• In addition to the ad hoc efforts of some institutions, including the BEC and the AEP, we have relatively little information about the activities of other institutions that could be involved in ensuring the integrity of the electoral process and protecting democracy. While we understand that not all activities can be made public, we would like to point out that we do not yet have a complete analysis of the November elections. Trust in the electoral process can only be rebuilt through transparency.
• A relevant question also remains regarding the financing of certain networks, influencers, or unclaimed accounts. These elections, like those in 2024, have shown that transparency in financing is becoming an increasingly important issue. The use of cryptocurrencies in political financing can no longer be ignored. We observed, for example, in the November elections how cryptocurrencies were used indirectly to illegally finance the campaign, thereby affecting the integrity and transparency of the process.
  • In theory, TikTok does not allow political advertising on its platform, but payments can be made outside the platform through intermediaries, which ultimately aim to increase a candidate’s visibility—these are very difficult to track.
  • In the case of Facebook, we have also noticed that the identity of those who pay is not actually that easy to trace, even by the authorities, despite the fact that Facebook has developed a transparency platform. EFOR has notified the AEP of expenditures of nearly €200,000, including for pre-campaigning, made by a network of unclaimed pages with questionable identification data. The source of some of these expenditures has not yet been identified.
• The withdrawal of Meta and Google from the political advertising market following the entry into force of Regulation 900 will not help transparency at all, on the contrary. Regulation 900 tends to become useless if those to whom it applies withdraw from the game. Most likely, inauthentic behavior will remain very present, but it will be more difficult to track. Ignoring this reality means nothing less than abandoning a fight that is already tearing our democracies apart and allowing the infiltration of external and internal interference operations to manipulate public opinion.

What can be done?

• We need to strengthen the capacity of our institutions to monitor inauthentic networks. This does not mean developing opaque structures that consume public money, including European funds, and then communicate nothing to the public under the pretext of confidentiality. In countries with good practices in combating manipulation and inauthentic online activity, such as the Baltic states, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, etc., even the secret services have a practice of publishing reports full of interesting content that serve to debate issues in society. In Romania, if non-governmental organizations can carry out such analyses using only public data, the argument of confidentiality should not hide the lack of institutional action.
• We need genuine digital analysis capacity at the national level. Dedicated structures should be set up within ANCOM or a civil entity similar to STRATCOM, made up of IT experts, artificial intelligence specialists, data analysts, and legal advisors specializing in technology. Such a structure should operate transparently and collaboratively with civil society and electoral authorities, not spend money on software that does not work and never produces public reports.
• It is necessary to bring back to the forefront the obligation of digital platforms to cooperate proactively in the automatic detection of inauthentic networks. It is not enough for platforms to wait for ad hoc reports from NGOs with limited resources and restricted access to data. Platforms have a duty to comply, not just to cooperate voluntarily, in combating systemic risks, which have become elements of a veritable hybrid war threatening the integrity of electoral processes in the European Union. So we need to work quickly, massively, and as much as possible ex ante, not just through post-factum reactions.
• At the national level, unfortunately, priority continues to be given to what is easy to quantify, to the detriment of interventions with real impact. This means we risk limiting fundamental rights like freedom of expression, as we’ve explained in detail, and digital responsibilities end up with institutions that don’t have enough capacity, which leads to bureaucratic bottlenecks and sometimes questionable decisions.
• The Expert Forum has repeatedly pointed out the need for real-time auditing of electoral financial statements, coupled with monitoring of online advertising spending. The capacity of the AEP needs to be strengthened: it should not become an institution that solves all problems, but it should have more capacity to effectively track these correlations. Thus, we cannot conclude that what was spent is what was declared. In other words, self-declarations by electoral competitors or political parties are not sufficient.

Penalties imposed for violations of regulations on political advertising

As we wrote in the previous EFOR report, by July, the AEP had imposed 18 administrative penalties under Article 16(2) of GEO 1/2025, totaling 295,000 lei. According to the response received from the AEP, by July 21, only one decision had been challenged in court, eight had been sent for enforcement, five offenders had paid the fines, and four of them were within the 15-day period from the date of notification of the penalty documents. However, the audit of the presidential elections had not been completed at the time of publication of this report, so the sanctions could be extended.

 

The initiative is carried out through the PROTEUS project implemented by The Transatlantic Foundation and co-funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.