France’s Crackdown on Free Speech Reaches Romania
On Romania’s election day, Telegram’s CEO reignited debate over Macron’s role in Europe’s crackdown on free speech.
France’s meddling in the Romanian election has all the hallmarks of Macron's diplomacy. While it spurred a well-deserved wave of French bashing among Romanians, as I was describing in a previous post, Macron managed to get his favored candidate elected yesterday and to take the win—at least for the moment.
A new part of the story has been shared by Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov, who has a history of being targeted by France (read Matt Taibbi's article from October in Le Monde diplomatique here).
Yesterday, at 5PM, Pavel Durov shared the following message with Romanian users, on the official Telegram channel:
“A Western European government (guess which one 🥖) contacted Telegram, asking us to silence conservative voices in Romania ahead of today’s presidential elections. We categorically refused. Telegram will not restrict the freedom of Romanian users and will not block any political channels.
You cannot ‘defend democracy’ by destroying democracy. You cannot ‘combat electoral interference’ by interfering in an election. Either there is freedom of speech and fair elections — or there isn’t. The Romanian people deserve both.”
Of course, the news was seized upon by the unanimous local media, who used it to denounce Russian meddling—a recurring theme among them—shouting “Russia” at anything dissenting from Macron’s views and those of his local allies. Before the closing of the voting precincts, the French embassy issued a statement (at 7:35 PM local time) rejecting the accusation:
Message from the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs:
“Completely unfounded accusations are circulating on Telegram and Twitter regarding an alleged interference by France in Romania’s presidential election.
France categorically rejects these accusations and calls on everyone to act responsibly and to respect Romania’s democracy.
The first round of Romania’s presidential election last December was annulled by Romania’s competent authorities acting in full sovereignty, following very real digital and financial interference by actors linked to Russia.
Further investigations by Romanian authorities and the European Commission later confirmed the seriousness of these interferences, including the manipulation of the TikTok algorithm.
In this context, the recent accusations against France are nothing more than a diversion from the real interference threats targeting Romania. France calls on all Romanian political actors to act responsibly and to defend democracy.
As a partner and friend, we remind that France has stood by Romania in its accession to the European Union, its reforms, its entry into the Schengen Area, and its progress. It has also supported its security, by sending French soldiers just five days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022.
Lying about France, insulting it, means erasing this history.”
A few hours later, after the closing of the voting, Mr Durov made a follow-up statement:
This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused. We didn’t block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran. We won’t start doing it in Europe.
Telegram communicating its concerns to users is not new. French users have received a similar message a few months ago, amid another push to access data.
A bill requiring messaging apps to include a backdoor—allowing police to access private messages—was passed by the Senate. Fortunately, the National Assembly rejected it. But the debate is far from over: this month, the Paris police chief has once again defended the idea.
Members of the National Assembly had the wisdom to reject a law that would have made France the first country in the world to strip its citizens of their right to privacy. Even authoritarian regimes have never banned encryption.
Why? Because it is technically impossible to guarantee that only the police would be able to access a backdoor. Once introduced, such a door can be exploited by others—foreign agents, hackers, etc. The result: the private messages of all citizens, even those who obey the law, risk being compromised.
Of course, the relationship between Mr Durov and the authorities must be called into question. One of the questions is: which authorities?
Durov's relationship with Russia is complex - he's positioned himself as a free speech defender, refusing FSB demands for user data in 2013 and Telegram encryption keys in 2018, leading to his ousting from VK and a temporary Telegram ban in Russia.
His August 2024 arrest in France already raised questions both about France and Durov. Post-arrest, Telegram made changes that some view as compromising Durov's privacy stance.
I don't know the truth behind this story. One has to admit that Durov is either a pure pro-free speech libertarian, concerned by the silencing of voices—conservative ones in the current instance—or somebody who may at times have to cooperate with authorities. In that case, we can only consider the nature of the struggle.
On one hand, he promotes free speech and privacy, which is a perfect reason to distribute the message he did. On the other, if he is blackmailable, if he works at times with the authorities, this message could have been the perfect smoking gun to annul the elections again in case the sovereigntist candidate had won.
Mr. Durov’s message in Romania serves as a critical warning, prompting questions about whether the May 2025 election round mirrors the so-called irregularities of the November 2024 round, which led to the annulment of the presidential elections.
The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe criticized that annulment for relying on flimsy or non-transparent evidence, raising doubts about the integrity of the Constitutional Court and Romanian institutions. But if one has to admit that social media platforms “were manipulated” in November, as alleged by the authorities, for sure they could have been similarly manipulated to favor Mr. Dan, Macron’s preferred candidate in Romania, in this election. Durov’s statement should therefore raise urgent concerns about potential interference on other platforms in Romania, at the initiative of the French administration — TikTok and Facebook.
However speculative this may sound, there are indeed signs—a revealing local initiative was launched on February 12th, which I publicly condemned it at the time. While the U.S. Congress was holding hearings on the censorship-industrial complex, in Romania, Expert Forum and several other NGOs — local actors of that same complex — were busy asking the European Commission for increased access to social media data. They claimed it was in the name of transparency. But not the kind that matters to users: they never demanded transparency around shadowbanning, nor did they call for open-source algorithms. Their idea of “transparency” was transparency for the experts — ahead of the upcoming elections. Who can trust them? (Full details here.)
In this context, the possibility of a “reverse-Georgescu” operation — one where amplification was controlled to favor France’s preferred candidate — should not be dismissed, especially in light of Durov’s statement.
In the European crackdown on speech, Rumble’s approach may be the more principled one. Acknowledging that France is an enemy of free speech, Peter Thiel decided to cut access to his video platform in France. At one point, that's probably the only thing you can do against the censors, cut off from them.
But who will we speak to, and through which channel, if we want our freedoms back?