Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez.

And we're going to begin today in Romania, where people are voting in a presidential election

that has huge implications for the country's relationship with the United States,

the European Union, and for the war in neighbouring Ukraine.

It is, in fact, a rerun of an election held last November. The result of that was annulled by

the Constitutional Court after allegations of fraud and Russian interference in favour of

Kalin Georgescu. He's the far-right candidate who came from nowhere to emerge as the winner of the

first round. Furthermore, he's been barred from standing again, decisions that have drawn sharp criticism

from the US Vice President J.D. Vance, who's described it all as undemocratic censorship.

While Mr. Georgescu cast his vote alongside the new frontrunner, George

Simeon, also a right-wing ultra-nationalist.

I voted with Kalen Georgescu.

Our only mission here is to regain the constitutional order and democracy. My only objective is to put

Romanians first. Well, let's go live to Bucharest and speak to our Central Europe correspondent,

Nick Thorpe. And Nick, just first of all, I mean, your impressions of turnout for this rerun?

Well, James, it's looking pretty big. Some of the projections so far are looking at

well into the 60% margin. Perhaps the latest projections, it could reach as high as 67%. That's a combination

of a very warm, sunny day bringing people out today. Obviously, people feel very mobilised

by the different issues at this election, also that the Romanian diaspora abroad voting in large

numbers in this election. We had there from George Simeon. I mean, to what extent is he the

political soulmate of Kalin Georgescu, the man whose result was cancelled and he wasn't allowed to stand in this rerun.

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