Romania and The European Union

Dimitris Papadimitriou, David Phinnemore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134191062
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

This book explores the dynamics behind Romania's relationship with the European Union from the collapse of the Ceaucescu regime in 1989, to its recent accession to the EU in 2007. As a completely up-to-date and detailed study, it identifies key developments in EU-Romania relations, as well as the challenges Romania faced in its efforts move from the margins of the European integration to EU membership. In so doing, the analysis contributes to wider debates about the dynamics underpinning EU enlargement. Moreover, the book reveals the consequences and limits of Europeanization.

Romania and the European Union analyses:

• 
  
  

• the impact of integration on the consolidation of democracy in Romania;

• 
  
  

• the country's economic development, in accordance with the EU's Copenhagen criterion - the need for acceding states to possess a 'functioning market economy';

• 
  
  

• the process of macroeconomic reform;

• 
  
  

• the reform of its public administration;

• 
  
  

• the country's efforts in implementing the EU's acquis in the areas of justice and home affairs –a focal point in the accession negotiations given Romania's geographical location, and its vulnerability as a major transit point for illegal migration and trafficking into the EU – and securing its external borders;

• 
  
  

• the EU's role in promoting reform as well as the limits of EU influence

• 
  
  

• the obstacles Romania has had to overcome in meeting the demanding pre-requisites of accession to the EU.

This book identifies the EU's role in promoting reform, but equally the limits of EU influence. It reveals the obstacles Romania has had to overcome in meeting the demanding pre-requisites of accession to the EU.

1 From isolation to incomplete rehabilitation

The politics of cautious rapprochement, 1989–1997

The collapse of communist order in Central and Eastern Europe during the autumn and winter of 1989 found the then European Community (EC) preoccupied with its own internal agenda – namely, the process of negotiating economic and monetary union (EMU) – and with very few instruments at its disposal to shape the immediate aftermath of popular revolutions in the region. The process of devising new policy instruments for the regulation of economic and political relations with the emerging Central and East European (CEE) democracies has been an incremental and often controversial one. During the early stages of transition, the EC (later EU) refused to commit to the principle of eastwards enlargement despite persistent calls from its CEE partners to do so. The prospect of EU membership for these countries was first acknowledged by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993, before an embryonic EU ‘strategy’ for enlargement was put into place during the mid-1990s. This culminated, in 1997, in the ‘Agenda 2000’ document (European Commission, 1997a), a series of detailed policy proposals for preparing the EU for enlargement, published alongside the Commission’s opinions on the membership applications submitted in 1994–1996 by ten CEE countries.¹

The chronological scope of this chapter coincides with the early stages of Romania’s turbulent post-communist transition. Despite having enjoyed a privileged relationship with the European Economic Community (EEC) during the 1970s, Romania’s stock in Brussels during the final years of its communist dictatorship had plummeted. The initial joy generated by the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu, however, soon gave way to EU suspicion over the true nature of the ‘revolution’ that had toppled him. As democratic and economic reforms at home failed to gather momentum, Romania’s rapprochement with the EU stumbled, leaving the country effectively ‘relegated’ from the emerging integration frontrunners: Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland – the so-called Visegrád countries. During a period when the EU’s emerging commitment to enlargement accelerated the pace of Europeanisation across the region, Romania’s integration with the EU seemed paralysed by the failure of the country’s political elites to make a clean break from communist legacies.

The European Community and communist Romania

Despite its zealous commitment to Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy at home, Romania’s foreign policy during the course of the Cold War was far from loyal to the wishes of the Soviet Union. Whilst Romania became a founding member of both the Warsaw Pact and the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the country’s first communist leader, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, resisted Stalin’s plans for Romania to become a principal supplier of agricultural products to the Soviet bloc. By the early 1960s, Dej’s efforts to secure the finances and know-how for his ambitious industrialisation programme culminated in a series of goodwill gestures to the West and China (Cviic, 1991: 54). This policy was to be consolidated and extended once Nicolae Ceauşescu rose to the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965.

Like his predecessor Ceauşescu was keen to reduce his country’s dependence on the Soviet Union and exploit the possibilities offered by the confrontational setting of the Cold War. Hence, in 1967 Romania became the first East European country to establish diplomatic relations with West Germany, and a year later Ceauşescu was the only communist leader to condemn the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (Swain and Swain, 1993: 144–145). Romania’s economic reorientation away from the Soviet bloc gathered pace in the 1970s, with the country’s membership of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (1971) and the International Monetary Fund (1972). By 1975 the CMEA’s share of Romania’s foreign trade had dropped to 37.8 per cent from 60.7 per cent a decade earlier (Wallden, 1994).

Ceauşescu’s apparent willingness to defy the official Soviet line earned Romania easy access to foreign finance and afforded its communist leader a series of high-profile state visits to Washington, London and other Western capitals. Romania’s independent foreign policy was also rewarded with closer ties with the EEC. In 1974, Romania became the first East European country to be included in the EEC’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), allowing for easier access of Romanian agricultural products to the EEC market. As relations between Romania and the West continued to improve during the late 1970s, Romania was also the only country from the Soviet bloc to sign a comprehensive trade agreement with the EEC in 1980 (Official Journal, 1980). By that time, the EC accounted for over 20 per cent of Romania’s foreign trade (Dijmărescu, 1989; Wallden, 1994).

For all its Realpolitik expediency, however, Ceauşescu’s marriage of convenience with the West began to fall apart in the early 1980s. As the Ceauşescu regime turned more introvert and repressive at home, Western capitals began to disassociate themselves from Romania’s increasingly unpredictable ruler. Gorbachev’s ascent to the Soviet leadership in 1985 also reduced tensions between the Soviet Union and the West and diminished Romania’s ‘value’ in the Cold War chessboard. Within this context, Romania’s relations with the EEC came under severe pressure. In April 1987, the Commission had opened negotiations with the Romanian government with a view to renewing the 1980 trade agree-ment. These negotiations, however, soon faced deadlock as criticism of human rights violations in Romania begun to mount in the European Parliament (EP).

In August 1988, the EP’s Directorate General for Committees and Delegations informed MEPs that Romania ‘was the most repressive country in Eastern Europe ... in which the authoritarian control during the period 1986–1988 was becoming even tighter’ (European Parliament, 1988: 29). The confrontation between the EP and the Romanian regime reached new heights in early 1989, following the decision of the EP’s Political Affairs Committee to hold a public hearing in Brussels in order to investigate in more depth allegations of human rights violations in the country. The public hearing, which took place against strong opposition by the Romanian government, produced a damning resolution in which the EP once again deplored ‘...the Ceausescu tyranny’ (European Parliament, 1989a). In a further resolution in May 1989, the EP also urged the EC member states to ban all food imports from Romania due to the severe food shortages in the country, while the rapporteur Giorgio Rossetti described the situation in Romania as ‘depressing’ and admitted that ‘the political investment made by the EC in 1980, in signing a trade agreement with Romania, had shown no return’ (European Parliament, 1989b: 11).

Alarmed by the practices of the Ceauşescu regime, the Commission responded positively to the EP’s calls and, in April 1989, suspended negotiations with the Romanian government on upgrading the 1980 agreement to a Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) similar to those already signed with Poland and Hungary in 1988–1989. Moreover, in December 1989, in retaliation for the Romanian government’s brutal suppression of the Timisoara demonstrations, the External Relations Commissioner, Frans Andriessen, announced additional sanctions against Romania, including the freezing of the 1980 agreement and the cancellation of the Commission’s technical missions to the country, as well as Romania’s exclusion from further EC trade concessions to the CEE countries.

On the eve of Ceauşescu’s execution on 25 December 1989, Romania’s international profile had been transformed from that of a Cold War ‘darling’ to a pariah state. The legacy of the Ceauşescu regime was an isolated, impoverished and terrorised nation in search of a new identity in post-Cold War Europe. Unlike many of its CEE neighbours, however, Romania’s ‘return to Europe’ was to be an eventful and turbulent process. Following the initial joy of Ceauşescu’s overthrow, the West was soon confronted with the uncomfortable realities of the country’s incomplete 1989 ‘revolution’. The murky circumstances under which Ion Iliescu and his National Salvation Front (FSN) assumed power in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Ceauşescu regime undermined the legitimacy of Romania’s first post-communist leadership and cast a heavy shadow of suspicion over the country’s relations with the EU throughout most of the 1990s.

The PHARE programme and the negotiation of the trade and cooperation agreement

The normalisation of relations between the EC and the CMEA following the signing of the EC-CMEA Joint Declaration on 25 June 1988 provided the EC with an opportunity to pursue its first comprehensive initiative in communist Eastern Europe. Until then, the two largest trade blocs in Europe virtually refused to recognise one another and had no framework upon which to build trade relations and develop a political dialogue. In the aftermath of the Joint Declaration, the EC offered to negotiate TCAs (also known as ‘first generation’ agreements) with reform-minded communist countries in Eastern Europe. In September 1988, Hungary became the first such country to sign a TCA. Over the next two years similar agreements were signed with most CMEA countries, including the Soviet Union.

Despite their apparent political significance, these ‘first generation’ agreements were modest in their generosity and rather limited in their coverage. For example, they provided for only limited trade liberalisation in industrial products over a period of five years, and made no reference to agriculture or other sensitive product categories such as coal and steel. Crucially, the agreements contained no provisions for political dialogue between the two parties – a reminder that neither side was yet ready to negotiate on ideological grounds. However, as economic reform in some CMEA countries (such as Poland and Hungary) gathered pace during the course of 1989, it soon became apparent that the TCAs alone could not provide a sufficient response for the complex problems facing the economies that had begun their tentative absorption of free market principles.

The necessity for more and better coordinated assistance in order to support the economic reforms underway was recognised by the G-7 Summit held in Paris on 14–16 July 1989. To this end, the G-7 leaders asked the Commission to coordinate a new assistance programme for the reforming economies by bringing together intentional financial institutions and benefactor countries from across the world (the G-24 group). In response the Commission, in September 1989, launched an action plan for Poland and Hungary known as the PHARE programme (Assistance for Economic Reconstruction in Poland and Hungary) (see Box 1.1). The assistance, which was made conditional on ‘a firm commitment for substantial economic reforms’, involved measures for supporting: (i) domestic agricultural production; (ii) investment initiatives; (iii) vocational training; (iv) environmental protection; and (v) improved access to EC markets through the accelerated abolition of quantitative restrictions, more generous agricultural and tariff concessions, and extension of the GSP to the two countries (European Commission, 1989). The Commission’s proposals were followed by a declaration by the Strasbourg European Council in December 1989 that the benefits of the PHARE programme would be extended to other CEE countries that engaged in further economic and political reforms (Bulletin of the European Community, 1989).

Box 1.1 The PHARE programme

Extracts from the Declaration of the G7 Meeting in Paris (15 July 1989)

We welcome the process of reform underway in Poland and Hungary. We recognise that the political changes taking place in these countries will be difficult to sustain without economic progress. Each of us is prepared to support this process and to consider, as appropriate and in a coordinated fashion, economic assistance aimed at transforming and opening their economies in a durable manner. We believe that each of us should direct our assistance to these countries so as to sustain the momentum of reform through inward investment, joint ventures, transfer of managerial skills, professional training and other ventures which would help develop a more competitive economy…

…Concerning concerted support for reform in Poland and Hungary, we call for a meeting with all interested countries which will take place in the next few weeks. We underline, for Poland, the urgent need for food in present circumstances. To these ends, we ask the Commission of the European Communities to take the necessary initiatives in agreement with the other Member States of the Community, and to associate, besides the Summit participants, all interested countries.

G-24 assistance

Provided by OECD members and international institutions. Coordinated by the European Commission. Assistance conditional on ‘firm commitment for substantial economic reforms’.

• Trade concessions in favour of recipient countries.
• Medium-term financial assistance for currency and balance of payments support.
• Debt relief.
• Humanitarian assistance (food and medicines).

EC trade concessions in the context of G-24 assistance

• Extension of Generalised System of Preferences to recipient countries.
• Accelerated abolition of quantitative restrictions.
• Tariff concessions across a number of product categories (excl. ECSC products).
• Improved agricultural concessions.

The PHARE programme

• Programme for Economic Reconstruction for Poland and Hungary.
• Grants for technical assistance to recipient countries financed by the EC budget.
• In 1990 the programme was extended to cover all CEECs.
• PHARE funding allocated through ‘national programmes’ as well as ‘horizontal’ and ‘multi-country’ programmes (e.g. PHARE Democracy, Cross Border Cooperation).
• Since 1994, 25% PHARE funding directed to infrastructure projects.
• Since 1997, PHARE funding fully incorporated in the EU’s preaccession strategy (70% of funding for ‘institution building’ in the candidate countries).
• Total commitments (1990–2004): €16.6 billion.

PHARE and Romania

• Initial admission to the list of recipient countries in February 1990.
• Exclusion in July 1990 due to poor record of democratic reform (only humanitarian aid available).
• Formal admission into the PHARE programme in January 1991.
• Total PHARE commitments for Romania (1990–2006): €3.5 billion.

The assistance promised by the EC to the emerging CEE democracies did not go unnoticed by the new Romanian leadership. In his first televised address to the Romanian people, on 22 December 1989, Ion Iliescu promised to integrate his country into the European mainstream. Within three days of the execution of the Ceauşescus, a Commission delegation headed by PHARE adviser Herman de Lange visited Bucharest in order to establish contact with the new regime. Reporting back to his boss, Andriessen, de Lange emphasised the fluidity surrounding the FSN takeover in Romania, but supported the immediate despatch of humanitarian aid to Romania ‘without any preconditions whose observation was, at that time, impossible’ (European Commission, 1990a).

When Andriessen himself visited Bucharest on 14 January 1990, his verdict on the ‘revolution’ was also ambiguous: while he recognised that ‘the possibility of setbacks remained’, he urged the Council of Ministers to give a ‘sympathetic consideration’ to Romania’s request for inclusion in the PHARE programme and that ‘in principle, a new [trade and cooperation] agreement should be signed during the first half of the year’ (European Commission, 1990b).² The Commission’s proposals also found a receptive audience in the EP which, on 18 January 1990, welcomed the overthrow of Ceauşescu and argued for the ‘rapid conclusion’ of a TCA with Romania (European Parliament, 1990a). Against this background, on 5 February 1990 the Council of Ministers authorised the resumption of TCA negotiations, and soon afterwards the G-24 ministerial meeting agreed to Romania’s inclusion in the PHARE programme.

The ‘honeymoon’ period between the EC and Romania, however, was soon to end following fresh allegations of human rights violations by the FSN government. In the period between February and May 1990 the EP passed two more resolutions condemning the practices of the Iliescu regime, while human rights abuses in Romania became the subject of numerous written questions by MEPs from across the political spectrum (European Parliament, 1990b, 1990c). EP suspicion towards the Romanian leadership grew even greater in the run-up to Romania’s first multi-party elections scheduled for 20 May 1990. In a fresh resolution just days before these, the EP condemned ‘all intimidation of opposition parties and their candidates in Romania, organised or condoned by the ruling National Salvation Front’, and called the Council of Ministers to make clear to the Romanian authorities

that the continued improvement of their relations with the EEC will depend on the fair conduct of these elections and that, if it is evident that these elections have not been fairly conducted, the Community will no longer be able to provide the economic and technical aid it would wish to.

(European Parliament, 1990d)

Despite the concerns voiced by the European Parliament, relations between the Commission and the Romanian government continued to develop during the first months of 1990. A PHARE delegation which visited Romania in March 1990 concluded that political reforms had made ‘considerable progress’, and that ‘the principle of market economy was now beyond question’ (European Commission, 1990c). A few days earlier, the EC–Romania Joint Committee (provided for in the 1980 agreement) had convened in Brussels and reconfirmed the mutual interest for the resumption of the TCA negotiations that had been suspended in April 1989. Shortly after this meeting the Commission requested from the Council a new negotiating mandate. By May 1990 Romania had also been included in the Commission’s ‘PHARE-Action Plan’ for the beneficiaries of the G-24 assistance (European Commission, 1990d).

Meanwhile, the mishandling by the FSN government of the May election coupled with the violent suppression of the student demonstrations in Bucharest on 13–15 June 1990 intensified EC suspicion towards the Iliescu regime to the point of a...