& Estelle Nilsson-Julien
Published on
A fabricated Euronews video which claims that Romania cautioned French authorities over interference in the Romanian presidential election runoff last Sunday has been circulating on social media in the aftermath of the vote.
The report fraudulently bears the Euronews logo and alleges that Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the French government a “protest note” for attempting to meddle in the presidential elections with the help of messaging app Telegram.
Romania’s foreign, interior and defence ministries have in fact denounced what they called “Russian interference” in Sunday’s runoff, which saw pro-European centrist Nicușor Dan narrowly beat nationalist George Simion to the Romanian presidency.
Euronews did not produce or publish the video, and our branding was copied without consent. Our teams are working to ensure the video is removed from all social platforms.
The captioned video was first spotted by Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a government agency. Its format strongly resembles Euronews’ social media videos, but the content is inauthentic.
It comes after Pavel Durov, the Russian-born owner of Telegram, claimed on social media that France’s intelligence chief asked him to “silence” Romanian conservative voices by banning them from his messaging app ahead of Sunday’s presidential run-off.
There is no evidence to back Durov’s claims, which the French interior ministry has described as a “diversionary maneuver from the real threats of interference targeting Romania.”
But Durov’s allegations have since triggered a flood of disinformation on social media.
Durov, who was indicted in France last September on six charges related to illegal activity on Telegram, has said he would “testify” in favour of Simion when he contests Sunday’s runoff result before the Romanian Constitutional Court.
Euronews has contacted the foreign ministries of France and Romania to confirm that the allegations in the doctored video are false.
Our journalists are working on this story and the article will be updated.
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