Free Republic

Romania's Constitutional Court Friday canceled the presidential run-off election between far-right candidate Calin Georgescu and centrist Elena Lasconi. The court cited a Russian propaganda campaign as the reason. The court said in a statement that its decision two days before the run-off was to occur "annuls the entire electoral process regarding the election of the president of Romania." Declassified Romanian intelligence documents contained a security services warning that Russia had attacked the election system with an "aggressive hybrid action" to elevate a far-right previously politically unknown candidate. The declassified intelligence documents said Georgescu's victory was "not a natural outcome" and...

The German government will support the Ukrainian war effort for “as long as they need us” and no matter what public opinion of voters is on the issue, Germany’s foreign minister said on Wednesday. Appearing at the Forum 2000 conference in Prague, Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the ‘traffic light’ coalition government of Olaf Scholz, said that Germany will press on with supporting Ukraine’s struggle supporting sanctions against Russia for years if necessary.

The European Citizens’ Initiative is struggling to gain momentum a year after being launched, bogged down by technical and bureaucratic hurdles that have prevented a single petition from meeting all the requirements, civic activists say. ECIs are a form of petition created under the 2009 Lisbon Treaty to encourage grassroots involvement in European lawmaking. Of the nearly 30 proposed ECIs, only 14 have successfully registered and just one—focusing on water rights—has gathered the required one million signatures. But the latter falls short of requirements because the signatures come only from five EU states, two short of the minimum needed. …