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Wednesday, 11 March 2026, 10:00 AM – Aula Magna, BCU. Democracy and Civil Society in Eastern Europe: Where We Come From and What Will Become of Us in These Turbulent Times. As at the beginning of every year, EFOR released its report on the most significant recent developments. This year’s edition focused on the fate ···
In recent years, Romania has developed a legal and institutional framework for the recovery of criminal proceeds and instrumentalities. Money laundering is now criminalised as a standalone offence, and several types of confiscation are regulated, including extended confiscation. In the administrative sphere, Romania has introduced the confiscation of unjustified wealth of public officials and a ···
Justice is a public service and any reform of the judicial system must start from this principle. Discussions on judicial reform cannot be held behind closed doors with only representatives of the judicial system. As we requested every time that changes have been made in the field of justice, reform must be accompanied by serious ···
Author: Madalina Voinea Credits: Context, PROMPT Following the elections in the Republic of Moldova, we are seeing surprising reactions in the public sphere regarding the apparent performance of Vasile Costiuc’s Democracy at Home Party, a party that polls show to be below the 5% parliamentary threshold in the Republic of Moldova, somewhere between 1.8-3%. We ···
The infrastructure of an information war 93 million views and nearly 10,000 posts between September 1 and 23 Data source: Lists monitored on the FACT platform Data Credits from investigations of: Context.ro, ExpertForum.ro, Watchdog.md, Promo-LEX, PROMPT , DFR LAB -ATLANTIC COUNCIL Authors: Mădălina Voinea Contributors: Sorin Ioniță, Atilla Biro, Septimius Pârvu, Daniel Timofte, Mihaela Tănase, ···
A new EFOR booklet showing how Russia and China seek to discredit Eastern Europe’s democratic transformation after 1990. By reframing transition as failure and fueling “nostalgia propaganda,” these narratives aim to undermine institutions, sow distrust, and weaken the liberal order in our region. The booklet explores how politics, the economy, NATO, and memory itself became ···
This report’s monitoring exercise confirms and deepens findings from earlier Expert Forum monitoring for FACT-HUB.EU, which have documented coordinated disinformation operations in Moldova. Among our recent conclusions: (i) that pro-Russian narratives are being spread through both overt channels (e.g. political actors, media outlets) and covert ones (fake or anonymous social media accounts), (ii) that online ···
Expert Forum analyzed the financing of political parties in 2024. And it was not an easy task, especially since it was the richest year in the history of political parties. The state paid for reimbursements for electoral campaigns, as well as for annual subsidies to political parties, over a billion lei, from public money. We ···
Authors: Voinea Mădălina, Sorin Ioniță The report, based on the analysis of 3,391 videos, 36,338 comments, and 100 identified inauthentic accounts, reveals an alarming reality. From fake accounts generated by artificial intelligence that mimic the character of the “flower lady” to coordinated international networks that create the illusion of organic posting behavior, the report presents ···
Authors: Voinea Mădălina, Sorin Ioniță Expert Forum (EFOR) has identified a coordinated network of 17 TikTok accounts that have generated over 1 million views in the last seven days to promote parliamentary candidate Vasile Costiuc. The network shows clear signs of inauthentic behavior, with 993 “soldier” accounts systematically following the same political profiles. This is ···
Following their defeat in the 2024 presidential elections, the Romanian authorities rushed through Emergency Ordinance 1/2025, which regulates political advertising. The ordinance has been criticized for its lack of clarity and its potential to undermine freedom of expression. EFOR analyzed how the regulations on political advertising were applied in the May elections and is publishing ···
Expert Forum is proud to announce that our Executive Director, Laura Ștefan, has been appointed to the External Evaluation Commission for Prosecutors in the Republic of Moldova. The appointment was approved by the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova during its plenary session on July 10, 2025. Laura Ștefan stated: “I have been appointed by ···
Following the second round of presidential elections in Romania on 18 May, the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE), in cooperation with Expert Forum (EFOR) and the Vot Corect coalition of citizen election observers, hosted a high-level roundtable in Bucharest to discuss the findings and conclusions of the election observation in Romania. The event brought ···