ROMANIA'S TIKTOK STAR STUNS NATO AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

The 62-year-old far-right Romanian presidential candidate Georgescu created a mass following on social media, with some 3.8 million likes on TikTok and 298,000 followers.

- JOHN DOBSON

You could hear the sounds of jaws dropping in the European corridors of power last Sunday when the startling result of the first round of Romania's presidential election was announced. Defying all opinion poll projections the far-right candidate, Calin Georgescu, topped the first round having ran on an explicitly anti-NATO, anti-EU and anti-Ukrainian platform. The strong showing of Georgescu, who has no party of his own and campaigned largely on the social media platform Tik Tok, was without precedent since Romania shed communism in 1989. Even more surprising was that Georgescu polled only around 5 percent in the run-up to the election, having barely registered in earlier polls.

Observers were astonished when the leaders of the two largest parties, the leftish Social Democrats and centre-right Liberals, currently in a coalition government, were eliminated in the first round as voters shunned established parties. Romania is a member of both the European Union and NATO, and with parliamentary elections today and the second round of the presidential election on 8 December, the voters' choice could have a profound effect not only on the future of Romania but, critically even the future of Europe and the North Atlantic Alliance.

A strategically-placed nation of 19 million people, the largest country in southeastern Europe, Romania borders Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to the east, and shares a 400 mile border with Ukraine. Until now, Romania has played a supportive role in the West's backing for Ukraine as it holds out against the forces of Russia's Vladimir Putin in its fight to retain its freedom. The opening of the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta gave Ukraine a vital route to ship its grain exports out and receive military supplies in.