A geopolitical firestorm is erupting within the European Union and Nato ranks, and Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok is caught in the middle.

On Friday, Romania's constitutional court dramatically annulled the results of its first round presidential election held last month, after intelligence services warned of "aggressive hybrid action" by Russia to influence the vote.

A run-off had been scheduled for Sunday, in which Calin Georgescu, a far-right candidate with pro-Russian and anti-Nato views, had been favoured to win, in what would have been the latest shock to establishment politics across the West.

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Georgescu's views on geopolitics and economics, along with his embrace of conspiracy theories, have made waves across Europe, in a week that the French government fell under pressure from the far-left and right, and a month after the German one collapsed.

Georgescu has vowed to pull Romania's support for Ukraine and repair ties with Russia, China and Hungary. He has vowed to nationalise public utilities and push out foreign investors. He has also endorsed a series of conspiracy theories, including one stating that the bubbles in fizzy drinks contain nanochips that "enter you like a laptop".

He came from obscurity to win November's first round and, despite the controversies, had held a healthy lead ahead of Sunday's run-off. However, the court on Friday annulled "the entire electoral process regarding the election of the president of Romania", leaving the whole process in limbo.

Elena Lasconi, leader of the Save Romania Union party (USR) and liberal presidential candidate, has described the constitutional court move as "the moment when the Romanian state trampled over democracy". 

The unprecedented move was immediately condemned even by Georgescu's political opponent. "Today is the moment when the Romanian state trampled over democracy. God, the Romanian people, the truth and the law will prevail and will punish those who are guilty of destroying our democracy," said liberal candidate Elena Lasconi, who was due to compete in Sunday's run-off.

The move draws further attention to the shock rise of an extreme-right candidate whose success has been attributed by many to a viral TikTok campaign that saw him promoted to millions of voters. Now, authorities are focusing on the company - owned by China's ByteDance Ltd - and demanding to know how his stunning rise was allowed to progress unchecked.

On Thursday, the European Commission announced it had "stepped up its monitoring" of TikTok's role in the Romanian election and demanded that it retain information spanning from last month to next March, in case it is required as part of a probe.

Central to Brussels' concerns is whether there was a "systematic infringement of TikTok's terms of service prohibiting the use of monetisation features for the promotion of political content on the service".

This came a day after Romania's outgoing president Klaus Iohannis dramatically declassified explosive intelligence showing how paid support for the far-right candidate got promoted on TikTok but was not marked as part of an election campaign, even as other candidates' content was clearly marked.

The intelligence showed a single TikTok account making payments of US$381,000 in a single month from October 24 to influencers who had supported Georgescu.

The firebrand politician painted the intelligence dump as an establishment effort to stymie his rise.

Authorities also claimed that there were more than 85,000 efforts to hack electoral data systems in the run up to and on the day of November's first round of voting, which bore all the hallmarks of "state-sponsored actors".

"I think it's the first time in the history of the world when a state is organising an action against a candidate to stop him from running," Georgescu told Romanian television, denying any knowledge of the payments or influencers.

TikTok's European representatives were hauled before the European Parliament on Tuesday, during a testy hearing in which they were asked to explain what checks they had in place to prevent manipulation.

On Romania, the company said that it had consulted closely with authorities in the run-up to the election and that it had moved swiftly to contain any fake information spreading on its platform.

Brie Pegum, TikTok's global head of product, authenticity and transparency, said that in the three months before the election in Romania alone, it had removed over 66,000 fake accounts, removed 7 million fake likes and prevented an additional 40 million. It had also removed 10 million fake followers, blocked 216,000 spam accounts and removed 1,000 accounts impersonating Romanian political candidates, Pegum said.

She said that the company had shut down two "clusters" of accounts that had backed candidates including Georgescu, because they had not followed rules stating political content must be clearly marked.

Caroline Greer, TikTok's top lobbyist in Europe, grilled on whether user data could be transmitted to China, pointed to the company's Project Clover, whereby European users' data is secured in Europe. She said a third-party cybersecurity company was "actively monitoring the security gateways 24/7, ensuring that the data moves the way it should do".

"Political accounts or content is not promoted over and above any other type of content. Any content that is rising in popularity goes into an additional moderation queue, so it receives additional attention, including moderation for disinformation," Greer said.

But their answers were drowned out in a mutinous atmosphere, with the TikTok representatives looking shell-shocked as heckling lawmakers clamoured for better answers.

"I hear [you have] 6,000 content moderators in Europe - what the hell were they doing during the elections?" demanded Dirk Gotink, a Dutch lawmaker with the centre-right European People's Party, who said the house was "losing patience" with TikTok's responses.

Gotink said TikTok's reps were like a "fire department" that had "let the fire rage online for months during an election" and then played dumb.

While the parliament has no powers to rebuke TikTok, it does help to write EU laws on issues that will affect the company, such as digital and cybersecurity regulations. TikTok is already subject to several probes under the EU's digital services act, to which it says it is fully cooperating.

The febrile atmosphere further attested to the high stakes in Romania, where many fear a victorious Georgescu would form a populist vanguard in central and eastern Europe, along with Hungary's Viktor Orban and Slovakia's Robert Fico.

This would come as US president-elect Donald Trump threatens to pull support for Ukraine and force a peace deal with Russia that many in Brussels fear would force Kyiv to cede territory.

Asked about those concerns on Thursday, the EU's new defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius said that Trump would "only concentrate on China", leaving Ukraine for Europe to handle, was "not a very strategically wise message".

"The Chinese are watching what's happening in Ukraine. And if we show we are weak like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is expecting ... China will make their conclusions, that the West is weak. And they can, for example, target Taiwan or something," he said.

People wave Romanian and European Union flags during a pro-European rally in the capital Bucharest on Thursday. 

Like Fico and Orban, Georgescu is also seen to be favourably disposed to China, and could open a door for Beijing to improve its standing in some European capitals.

"If Georgescu becomes president, he will definitely try to improve Romania's relations with China," said Andreea Brinza, vice-president at the Romanian Institute for the Study of the Asia-Pacific.

"He has said that if he has to negotiate with Hungary, Russia and China he will definitely do so - this may provide hints about Georgescu's position regarding these countries and his admiration for their leaders."

While the Romanian president does not set foreign policy on his own, they represent the country at international forums, meaning Europe "will feel a President Georgescu immediately", said Jonathan Eyal, international director at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

"He's not just simply cutting ribbons and opening schools. He is going to be there at the height of European deal-making, right from day one. So actually, it's much worse than just the appearance of [a] figurehead, although it's not as much powers as those of the French president," Eyal explained.

However, Georgescu would not be an "Orban 2.0", he said, given Romania's central status to Nato and the fact that most regular citizens had no love for Putin.

"This idea that Romanians have turned pro-Russian is complete nonsense - he will try to straddle a media line of appearing to be a good Nato supporter and a good EU supporter, because, quite frankly, Romania has nowhere else to go," Eyal said, pointing to inequality and low social spending as people's primary concerns.

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