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03 December 2004
Romania: Europe's New 'Sick Man'
On November 28, Romania held general elections for
its presidency and parliament. On November 29,
President of the European Commission Jose Manuel
Barroso announced that the European Union intends
to sign an accession agreement with Romania in
2005 that would put the country on track to full
membership in 2007. The two events are closely
linked; the major issue in the electoral campaign
concerned which of the two major candidates was
best equipped to lead Romania into Europe
successfully.
Romania is the last
state to fall in line with the current march of
E.U. expansion into the former Soviet bloc. After
the fall of the Ceausescu regime -- the most
totalitarian system in Communist Eastern Europe
-- the country found itself with an obsolete
industrial base, a small consumer goods sector, a
large and impoverished rural population, and a
society that had been wounded and demoralized by
oppression. Since then, Romania has struggled to
right itself in a globalizing and competitive
capitalist economy with mixed success at best. It
is still 50 percent rural and its G.D.P. per
capita is $2,200, which is 30 percent of the
average for the enlarged E.U.
Along
with and in consequence of its economic
disadvantages, Romania has been plagued by public
corruption -- Transparency International
estimates that people spend 10 percent of their
earnings on bribes -- and a slow pace of market
reform. Its politics have been dominated by the
successor of the Communist Party -- the Social
Democratic Party (P.S.D.) -- which was led by Ion
Iliescu, who has been president of Romania for
eleven of the last sixteen years. Under Iliescu,
the former Communist elite benefited from
privatization of state industries and kept
control through a support base in the
impoverished peasantry that feared even worse
immiseration if the meager social safety net were
to be removed by market reformers.
With Iliescu constitutionally prohibited from
another term, the mantle of the P.S.D. fell on
the current prime minister, Adrian Nastase, whose
major opponent was Bucharest mayor Traian Basescu
of the centrist Alliance for Justice and Truth
that joins the National Liberal Party and the
Democratic Party. Both candidates are in their
mid-fifties and represent a new generation of
leadership growing out of the established
political formations. They shared a pro-Western
policy, but disagreed on how to apply it, with
Nastase promising to focus on remediating poverty
and Basescu promising to work for tax reform and
a climate more friendly to business and
investment.
The divide between Nastase
and Basescu is typical of the pattern of politics
in states that are lagging behind in the process
of globalization; some segments of the population
stand to lose from reform and others to gain. The
former segments support parties and candidates
pledged to protect or expand the safety net, and
the latter back the expansion of the market
economy. As in Ukraine, the winners and losers
from globalization are fairly evenly balanced in
the population, creating endemic instability,
weak and compromised policies, and ineffective
government. When -- as in Romania -- the balance
tilts towards social defense, the globalization
process is retarded rather than arrested or
reversed. The E.U. appears to be satisfied with
this imperfect result and to be more eager to
complete its design than to demand complete
Westernization.
Social Division and
Political Formations
As in all
lagging states that are transitioning from
state-dominated or relatively statist economies
to globalized capitalism, Romania is
characterized by a deep social division between
those who believe that their lives will improve
by integrating into the new competitive arena and
those who fear -- often with good reason -- that
they will not be able to compete successfully.
The same divide is present in more economically
advanced states, but, in them, the sector of the
population that fears that it will be left behind
by globalization is relatively small, allowing
politics to be based on multiple issues, of which
the globalization divide is one among many.
Lagging states do not have that luxury and their
societies tend to become polarized along the
lines of would-be haves and anxious have-nots.
In Romania's case, social division and
tension is compounded by the country's large,
conservative and poor peasantry that is
suspicious of the outside world and clings
tenaciously to the little that it has. The World
Bank reports that 20 percent of the population (5
million people) -- concentrated in the rural
areas -- lives under a subsistence level. The
situation in the cities, particularly the capital
Bucharest, is better, though far from good.
Nonetheless, there is a class of oligarchs and
their dependents, and a Western-oriented middle
class, both of which are receptive to
globalization.
The division in
Romania's society is represented politically by
the two major formations that contested the
November 28 elections. The pro-reform Alliance
for Justice found support in the cities and more
prosperous regions and among youth. The
establishment Social Democrats, in alliance with
the small Humanist Party, drew their support from
rural areas, the more impoverished regions and
the elderly dependent on pensions.
Given the convergence between the Alliance's
pro-Europe policy and the aspirations of its
constituencies, it has the relatively
straightforward task of representing its base
effectively. The same is not the case for the
Social Democrats who -- for geostrategic reasons,
self-interest of the established political class
and the overall advantages to the Romanian
economy from integration with Europe -- must
negotiate the tension between the reforms
demanded by the E.U. and the safety-net and
protectionist concerns of its base. Through
Iliescu's rule, the P.S.D. made halting reforms
and played to the fears of its base. When,
between 1996 and 2000, the centrist opposition
was in control, its factional splits did not
permit it to govern effectively.
The
P.S.D., despite its long tenure in office, is not
a political powerhouse -- indeed, it has had to
rule through coalitions. With an electoral
support of around 40 percent against the
approximately 35 percent of its main rival, the
P.S.D. has formed minority governments and forged
parliamentary alliances with the Democratic Union
of Hungary (U.D.M.R.), which represents Romania's
Hungarian minority's aspirations for greater
autonomy. The P.S.D. has also faced competition
for its support base from the ultra-nationalist
Grand Romania Party (P.R.M.), which gained 28
percent of the vote in the 2000 elections, but
has since slipped to half that support. Both
major formations court the pragmatic and moderate
U.D.M.R., which expects that integration with
Europe opens the promise of greater rights for
ethnic Hungarians, and shun the P.R.M., whose
perspective is inconsistent with the E.U.'s
internationalist and multiculturalist norms.
The support levels for the various
Romanian political formations indicate why reform
has been so halting in the country. Support for
the P.S.D. and P.R.M. adds up to more than 50
percent, placing the majority of the electorate
in the camp defending against globalization. The
P.S.D. functions as a mediator between the
demands of the E.U. and the antithetical concerns
of its base, which is not safely under its
control. It must attempt to appear to satisfy its
two masters, which is not possible in the long
run, so it proceeds in fits and starts. That the
P.S.D. elite and its cronies have profited from
its mediating role does not detract from the
importance of its function of keeping Romanian
society together by preventing social
polarization from becoming politicized as a stark
conflict between market reform and
ultra-nationalism.
The P.S.D.'s record
shows how difficult it is for a lagging state to
manage its contending social forces. A
disadvantaged state entering the globalizing
economy is, by definition, ill prepared to
compete successfully. The dislocations that a
forthright adjustment and restructuring would
cause mobilize those who would be adversely
affected to defend their threatened interests.
One of the possibilities of dealing with social
stress when the prospective losers outnumber the
prospective winners is a relatively weak
go-between or middle-man that has sufficient
power to take care of itself as it placates and
wards off the forces with which it negotiates.
The Campaign and the Election
Accession to the E.U. dominates the
Romanian public mind to the exclusion of nearly
every other issue, corruption being the only
exception. Romanian youth, in particular, see
E.U. membership for their country as the vehicle
for opening their horizons to a wider and better
world of greater opportunity, or at least as an
opportunity to escape the restrictions and
disadvantages of their present lives. The urban
middle class looks forward to a Western lifestyle
and economic improvement through E.U. aid and
business investment. Those who stand to lose
(excepting the ultra-nationalists) understand
that Romania has no choice but to try to seek
shelter under the European umbrella, but want the
process to be cushioned for them.
The
electoral campaign reflected the division between
sectors of hope and sectors of fear in the
Romanian public. Appealing to his constituencies,
Basescu portrayed himself as the best choice to
lead Romania into the E.U. He promised to make
the country fit for E.U. membership by rooting
out corruption and cronyism, lowering taxes to a
flat rate of 16 percent to diminish the
underground economy and create a more favorable
business climate, and being otherwise friendly to
business. Nastase responded by stressing the
successes of the P.S.D. in negotiating accession,
the international contacts he had made through
the accession process, and the recent growth of
the country's economy (largely dependent on a
good agricultural year and remittances from
Romanian guest workers abroad). He also promised
to root out corruption and, most importantly, to
attend to social welfare and "eliminate
poverty."
The campaign was energetic,
with the candidates covering the country as they
jockeyed for advantage in a race that was
foreseen by the competing alliances and by
analysts to be very close. In the week before the
elections, purported transcripts of discussions
among top officials of the P.S.D. found their way
into the press. The transcripts detailed
proposals to launch a criminal investigation of
Basescu, to rig electronic voting procedures in
the Senate, and to intervene in court cases to
help P.S.D. members. Nastase flatly declared the
transcripts to be fakes, whereas his opponent
fully credited them and warned of the strong
possibility that the impending election would be
subverted by fraud.
The results of the
election showed no movement in Romania's
political society. Nastase received 40 percent of
the vote and Basescu 34 percent, with the
candidates of the P.R.M. and U.D.M.R. polling 13
percent and 7 percent respectively. The vote for
parliament was less favorable for the P.S.D. --
it received 37 percent of the votes to 32 percent
for the centrist opposition -- resulting in a
"hung parliament" with no bloc in a majority,
even in coalition with the U.D.M.R. The failure
of either major presidential candidate to secure
a majority of the vote triggered a runoff
scheduled for December 12.
The
distribution of the vote was roughly what opinion
polls had predicted, reflecting the established
divisions in the public; what was new were the
charges of electoral fraud raised by Basescu's
camp, which demanded a new general election.
Basescu announced: "I am no longer fighting for
the presidency, but to restore democracy in
Romania. I am asking for international help. I
will continue with the runoffs." He accused the
Central Election Bureau of crediting 100,000
spoiled ballots to the P.S.D. and charged the
P.S.D. with massive multiple voting and other
forms of fraud and manipulation resulting in a
boost of 160,000 votes (2.5 percent of ballots
cast) to Nastase's total.
The P.S.D.
denied the charges, deeming the election to be
fair. The O.S.C.E. election monitoring team
concluded that the vote "seemed to be
professionally and effectively organized," but
cautioned that certain procedures, such as
supplementary lists and the ability for people to
vote outside their districts opened the
possibility for multiple voting. The local
monitoring group Pro Democracy was more severe,
stating that it had documented many
irregularities, but had been unable to determine
whether there had been widespread fraud. The
group withdrew from monitoring the runoff,
because of its failure to gain sufficient access
to the polling process during the general
elections.
On December 1, the Central
Election Bureau rejected a proposal to annul the
results of the general elections and shortly
thereafter Basescu accepted the Bureau's
decision, averting temporarily the possibility of
a Ukrainian scenario. The Liberal-Democratic
alliance hopes that Basescu will win the runoff
and be in the position to appoint the new prime
minister, which is the president's prerogative
when parliament is hung. His chances are boosted
by indications that the P.R.M., which also called
for a revote, is urging its supporters to stand
against Nastase. If the runoff is marred by
credible charges of serious fraud, the
possibility of civil direct action will become
more likely.
E.U.
Accession
As Romania stumbles
through a period of political incoherence, if not
yet serious instability, its progress towards
E.U. accession in 2007 remains on track. E.U.
Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen had
planned to complete Romania's accession talks on
November 24 -- on the eve of the general
elections -- but finalization was delayed for
"technical reasons," after complaints that it
would give a boost to the P.S.D. campaign. An
accession agreement, however, is not yet in
serious doubt, although there remain outstanding
issues on steel subsidies, politicization of the
judiciary, corruption and government influence on
the media, among others.
As the most
problematic candidate for accession -- and one of
the two last, along with Bulgaria, which has made
greater progress -- Romania's case for membership
is not cut and dried. Critics of E.U.
incorporation of Romania see the eagerness of the
bloc to embrace the country as a political move
to complete its design that sacrifices
established standards for membership. Political
scientist and Romania expert Tom Gallagher argues
that a lobby of Southern European states --
Portugal, France and Italy -- is "content to see
Romania as a Latin American outpost of corruption
inside the E.U." Indeed, a clause in Romania's
accession agreement -- which no other prospective
member has had to sign -- allows the E.U. to
delay accession by a year if the country is
deemed unfit for membership. Nonetheless, the
agreement stipulates that the E.U. will provide
$742 billion in extra aid to Romania between 2007
and 2009.
It is reasonable to conclude
that the E.U.'s receptivity toward Romania
indicates a shift in the organization, which
began with the absorption of the other
post-Communist states in Eastern Europe, from a
community with uniformity of standards to a power
bloc with overriding geostrategic aims. From a
geostrategic perspective, a Romania isolated from
Europe could become a source of instability -- a
breeding ground for organized crime that could
spill over into the E.U., and possibly a failed
state. As the E.U. bids to become a regional
power with a foreign policy geared to its own
interests and independent of the United States,
incorporation of Romania, which is already a
member of N.A.T.O., appears to be the most
prudent option to the European political
class.
Conclusion
More a geostrategic acquisition than a full
partner, Romania bids fair to become the new
"sick man of Europe" inside the E.U. Whether the
presidential runoff yields a continuation of the
P.S.D.'s oligarchical rule or the efforts at
reform pledged by the Liberal-Democratic
alliance, the country will remain impoverished,
socially divided and prone to corruption, with a
weak minority government, since a coalition with
the ultra-nationalists is anathema to Europe. The
possibility of a crisis caused by renewed claims
of serious election fraud looms, but what is more
likely is a continuation of stumbling along and
delayed and watered-down compliance with E.U.
demands. Accession remains the most likely
outcome, but even it is not certain.
In embracing Romania with misgivings, the E.U.
probably commits itself to pouring large amounts
of extra aid into the country, if for nothing
else than to tighten the security of its borders.
Europe will most likely pay for its acquisition,
fill out its current projected borders and, in
the process, become more a power bloc than the
community envisioned by its proponents.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
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The Power and Interest
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Birou de traduceri autorizate. Oana Gheorghiu - tel/fax: 252.8681 / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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