A fierce controversy erupted after the recent statements by former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, on the alleged power of the European Union to annul election results in its member states. Breton made this statement last month on the French television channel RMC Story. With a view to the upcoming federal elections in Germany and the expectation that the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) could do well, he declared: “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary.”
Breton was referring to the Romanian presidential election in November, in which the results were annulled after right-wing populist candidate Călin Georgescu unexpectedly received the most votes. The Romanian Constitutional Court justified this decision with an online campaign allegedly controlled by Russia to influence the election.
Breton did not specify who he meant by “we”, but as a Brussels politician, it was widely assumed that he was referring to the European Union.
The annulment of the election in Romania has caused a stir worldwide. US Vice President J.D. Vance referred to the event this week to point out a lack of democracy in Europe and to sharply criticize European elites at the Munich Security Conference.
András László, Hungarian MEP from Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, also attracted attention when he commented on Breton’s statement on X: The European Union refuses to respect democratic norms and is ready to “abolish democracy” if it does not like the election result of a member state. Entrepreneur and head of the newly formed U.S. Agency for Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, shared László’s post with the terse comment: “Exactly.”
The Hungarian fact-checking site Faktum then investigated the validity of László’s claims. This debate becomes even more explosive in the context of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which was passed in 2022 and came into force in 2024. The DSA obliges online platforms within the EU to censor content on the instructions of the Brussels bureaucracy if it violates EU law. It also prescribes greater transparency in political advertising.
Some online companies, including Google, have since declared that they will not bow to the DSA. Elon Musk’s Platform X has been accused by the EU of violating the DSA by disseminating “problematic political content”. Musk rejects these accusations and claims that the EU is only trying to suppress unpleasant opinions.
So far, no election result has been annulled with reference to the DSA. But theoretically, a member state could use it or other EU laws to reverse a national election if it does not like the result. According to the EU treaties, national courts have jurisdiction to enforce both EU law and national law.
Although the EU was not officially involved in the annulment of the Romanian election – at least not openly – the situation there is being closely monitored. Some see it as a test case for how the DSA could be used in the future. This also underlines the European Commission’s decision to launch its own investigation into whether “Russian interference” on social media played a role in the Romanian election.
Brussels seems to apply double standards when it comes to “foreign interference”. András László pointed out in his tweet that the EU was silent when Viktor Orbán’s united opposition received $10 million from anonymous sources in the US and Switzerland ahead of the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary elections. It was also common knowledge that the US Embassy supported the opposition’s media work during the election campaign. (The European Commission rejects accusations of double standards and stresses that it has only limited powers to interfere in elections, as this is in principle the responsibility of the member states.)
In response, the Hungarian parliament passed a law in 2023 that led to the establishment of the Office for the Defense of Sovereignty. This authority is supposed to prevent foreign interference, for example by checking non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other institutions in Hungary that are financed from abroad. The EU then sued Hungary before the European Court of Justice on the grounds that the law violated the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.
In the case of Germany, the Federal Elections Act guarantees the integrity of the elections. It is also the legal instrument for contesting election results. The Federal Constitutional Court would be the competent authority if there were indications of election manipulation. But an annulment of election results has never happened in recent German history. Faktum considers it extremely unlikely that a German court would declare an election result invalid solely on the basis of the new EU directives on social media.
If the German government finds evidence of foreign interference in an election, it would first launch an investigation before considering the drastic step of annulling a result. In addition, there must be clear and comprehensive evidence. This is fundamentally different from the events in Romania, where the electoral law is regulated in a completely different way. The probability that a German court will annul a Bundestag election is therefore extremely low.
How the DSA will ultimately influence national politics in Europe remains to be seen. There is agreement that elections in the age of social media must be protected from foreign influence. But while liberals see the DSA as an instrument against such interference, conservatives fear that it restricts freedom of expression. It remains to be seen what effects the DSA will have in practice.
In the case of Germany, however, it can at least be said that Thierry Breton’s claim that the EU will annul the Bundestag election if the AfD does well is greatly exaggerated.
Translated and edited by Hans Seckler