Politics

The EU - foe or friend?

By: Andrei Postelnicu

Andrei Postelnicu claims that the EU has done Romania a great disservice by not insisting it make widespread improvements.

Posted: 12/03/2006

When the European Commission issued its annual report on Romania in October, it inevitably concluded the country is soundly on track to join the Union in 2007. Such a conclusion, and the process leading up to it, emphasises the disfunctionality of the EU accession process at its worst. It also sets the stage for potential regional instability and a disaster the EU can hardly afford if the remainder of Romania’s accession is managed the same way it has been until now.

Yet the Commission had no choice but to conclude Romania is readier to join the EU with each passing day. To do otherwise would amount to a denial of previous endorsements of Romanian progress on accession. Duplicity of this magnitude would have been too much, even in Brussels.

To be fair, Romania is more ready to be a member of the EU than it has ever been. Economic growth has been impressive in recent years and will be more than respectable, albeit slower, this year. Large-scale privatisations and macroeconomic reform are largely concluded. Inflation has been decreasing steadily and public finances have been managed prudently enough for Romania’s credit to warrant investment-grade ratings. Foreign direct investment has grown sharply, and many multinationals do brisk business in Romania.

More recently, Romania has adopted legislation to reform its judicial system, triggering praise from Franco Frattini, the Commission vice-president. The appalling shape of a judicial system in which judges often hand out verdicts on a whim had caused the insertion of the infamous safeguard clause in Romania’s accession treaty signed in April.

Much of this progress is due to Romania’s requirement to adopt policies in order to advance on its EU-bound path. The constraints imposed by EU legislation and rules have forced Romanian policymakers to be more disciplined than they would have otherwise been.

However, there is more than the above to Romania’s readiness for EU membership, or lack thereof. While the country’s macroeconomic indicators are in mostly rude health, this is not reflected in the quality of life of most Romanians. Too many of them live in abject poverty earning the lowest per capita income in central Europe, in villages that would make Andalucia’s worst corners look positively thriving by comparison. This year’s floods have only worsened that situation.

Romania’s infrastructure is in abysmal shape, while the healthcare and education systems are facing daunting crises. Bucharest governments have shown no structured policy responses for any of these problems.

As for the judicial system, a stunning 85 per cent of Romanians believe a favourable outcome from a trial is impossible without money or connections, according to a recent EU-financed survey. Graft is still pervasive in Romania, which was found the most corrupt among European countries by the latest Transparency International report.

These problems are not new and are known by European officials monitoring Romania’s progress. Their cause lies in the incompetence of Romanian governments, which have been unwilling and unable to implement aggressive reform to combat these issues head on.

However, EU officials also bear some responsibility for allowing Bucharest to get away without a determined and ambitious plan to tackle these challenges. Through an incoherent alternation of prodding by Brussels bureaucrats and praise by member-state politicians, the EU has in effect told Romania that it can get away with paying lip-service to the most important policies it needed to implement. The chiding of Eurocrats was always balanced by just enough praise by the prime minister, president or foreign minister of some EU member or other to enable the Romanian government to tell its citizens that the accession remained on track. Cynical Bucharest politicians understood quickly that political sympathies with capitals could trump the worries of Brussels technocrats, and they played this card to the hilt.

Meanwhile, Romanian governments have presented EU entry to the people as a cure-all remedy. This has built up hugely unrealistic expectations among the population about what EU membership will bring. There has been hardly any mention of the thousands of companies that will disappear because of their inability to function in the single market. Anticipatory talk about the billions in accession funding never included the fact that Romania has been unable to efficiently absorb as much as 90 per cent of this money in some projects.

Deceived so many times before, Romanians believe EU entry will put an end to at least some of their troubles, if only by forcing their leaders to misbehave a little less. Few realise the toughest work has yet to be done for Romania’s EU accession to be a success. Were it to be a failure or some muddy compromise, this could prove one disappointment too many for a people that has seen more than its fair share of letdowns.

For the sake of stability in the EU, Brussels must therefore do everything it can to help – or force – Bucharest to stay the course. This will require the sort of political will neither Romania nor the EU have ever seen. Yet both do not deserve, and cannot afford, anything less.

Andrei Postelnicu is based in New York where he writes for the Financial Times.

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