Central Electoral Bureau takes into account fundamental aspects already ruled by CCR in candidacy rejection

   The Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) clarified on Sunday evening that it took into account the fundamental aspects "already ruled upon" by the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) when making the decision to reject Calin Georgescu's candidacy for the presidential election."The Central Electoral Bureau cannot grant prevalence to the analysis of the formal aspects of this candidacy, to the detriment of the fundamental aspects already ruled upon by the Court. In fact, if the Central Electoral Bureau did not analyse the entire context of the candidacy, there would be a risk that, in the absence of a subsequent referral to the Constitutional Court for this verification, a candidacy affected by fundamental deficiencies would be registered and would go through the entire electoral process, only for the Constitutional Court to be in the position of invalidating the election results for the manifest lack, prior to the submission of the candidacy, of a registration condition," reads the BEC decision.According to the same source, Calin Georgescu's candidacy does not meet the conditions of legality, as he "by failing to comply with electoral procedure rules, violated the very obligation (...) to defend democracy," which is based on "fair, honest and impartial elections."The BEC deems as relevant that the Constitutional Court's decision of December 6, 2024, which annulled the electoral process for electing the President of Romania and ordered its full restart, ruled on "the way the candidate (...) understood to relate to the conditions resulting from the sacred formula of the oath taken by the person elected to the office of President of Romania.""Moreover, by annulling the ongoing electoral process and ordering its full restart (including the submission of candidacies) as a result of the candidate's failure to comply with electoral procedure regulations (...), the Constitutional Court implicitly and universally ruled on the failure to meet the legal conditions for the registration of the candidacy submitted by Calin Georgescu. It is inadmissible that, upon restarting the electoral process, the same person would be considered as fulfilling the conditions to run for the office of President of Romania," the decision further reads.The BEC concludes that, in light of the Constitutional Court's ruling on these issues, the fulfillment of the other conditions for registering the candidacy becomes irrelevant.The decision can be appealed to the Constitutional Court within 24 hours.BEC announced on Sunday evening that the registration of Calin Georgescu's candidacy had been rejected.According to a statement from BEC, the registrations of two other independent candidates, Maria Marcu and Ion Popa, were also rejected.The registration of Nicusor Dan's candidacy was accepted.According to the presidential election calendar, within a maximum of 48 hours from the submission of the candidacy, but no later than March 17, the registration or rejection of candidacies or electoral symbols will take place.No later than March 18, candidates, political parties, organisations of citizens belonging to national minorities, political alliances, electoral alliances and voters may file complaints with the Constitutional Court regarding the registration or rejection of candidacies or electoral symbols, as the case may be. The Constitutional Court resolves complaints through final decisions, which are immediately communicated to the Central Electoral Bureau and published in the Official Journal.