Romania in 2006

Romania in 2006

Area: 238,391 sq km (92,043 sq mi)
Population (2006 est.): 21,577,000
Capital: Bucharest
Chief of state: President Traian Basescu
Head of government:Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu

Romania was offered full membership in the European Union on Sept. 26, 2006, although EU officials continued to have serious concerns about corruption and political interference in the justice system. Unprecedented safeguards were attached to the first three years of Romanian EU membership. Unless elected politicians agreed to having their wealth vetted by an integrity agency and instituted other reforms, Romania would be excluded from parts of the European treaty.

The four-party government headed by Calin Popescu-Tariceanu was an uneasy alliance of modernizers loyal to Pres. Traian Basescu and antireformers who gravitated toward the prime minister, the leader of the National Liberal Party. Justice Minister Monica Macovei was perhaps the only member of the government who commanded strong respect in the EU. She was an independent who forced through vital reforms in the teeth of opposition from vested interests that preferred politicians to remain above the law. In March she complained that cabinet government had broken down because of the infighting between forces loyal to the president and those loyal to the prime minister.

Adrian Nastase, a former prime minister, was formally charged with corruption in February. This led to a crisis within the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which he led from 2000 to 2004. Still Romania’s largest party, it saw other figures from Nastase’s government decamp as they faced investigation for alleged lawbreaking. On September 8 it was the turn of Tariceanu’s close ally, the oil mogul Dinu Patriciu, to be charged with corruption. Nevertheless, most Romanians did not expect corruption to decrease substantially for at least five years. There was also pessimism about the likelihood that the economy could do well in the face of competition from powerful EU states. Already nearly one-tenth of the labour force had immigrated to Western Europe, and the Romanian population was expected to continue the decline evident since the 1990s.

Political infighting jeopardized Romania’s international peacekeeping role in June when Defense Minister Theodor Athanasiu suddenly called for Romania to pull out its 890 troops from Iraq. This was a bid to disrupt a visit that Basescu was making to U.S. Pres. George W. Bush the following month. Basescu had important reserve powers in foreign and defense policy, and the bid was easily squashed. When U.S. and British embassy officials publicly lauded the decision of the Supreme Defense Council to block the troop withdrawal, Tariceanu took the unusual step on July 3 of publicly criticizing them for their interference in Romania’s internal affairs.

Tariceanu’s party also disputed Basescu’s control of the secret services, claiming that his plans to reform the unwieldy intelligence community could upset the constitutional balance by giving him too many powers. In a rare example of consensus, the president chose a new head of domestic intelligence from the opposition PSD. The low esteem experienced by the quarrelsome mainstream parties increased the popularity of ultranationalists and populist forces. President Basescu’s own substantial popularity provided stability in a fractious political landscape. In August he called for a presidential system of government in order to reinvigorate a flagging reform process.

Tom Gallagher