Beating the barriers on the road to Europe

It has only taken days as a member state for Romania to come under attack for infringing the sacred EU principle of free movement. Despite instructions from the government in Bucharest, its local officials have been maintaining their €60 levy on vehicles entering the only bridge on a key route linking Europe to Turkey across the Danube.

The spat is emblematic of some of the challenges arising from Romania’s accession. It simultaneously highlights the country’s desperate lack of infrastructure and the poverty-driven hunger to exploit every revenue-generating loophole in a far-from-seamless administration.

It also demonstrates the chronic lack of sympathy between Romania and its fellow new member state, Bulgaria. The Danube divides the two countries along some 600 kilometres of common border. But although the 2.8km bridge between Romanian Giurgu and Bulgarian Rousse is a conspicuous traffic bottleneck, the two countries have repeatedly failed to agree on the location and construction of a second bridge.

In most respects, however, Romania has made dramatic progress in the last five years. Economic growth accelerated to 7.4% in the first half of 2006. It has cut its deficit, and curbed inflation. Macroeconomic gains have recently started to spur the creation of a middle class. Most state assets have been privatised, competition law has been tightened and governance and bankruptcy legislation have been improved. The most recent World Bank survey places it among the top ten reforming countries. And although corruption and red tape continue to handicap the business environment, the justice system is being reformed and the fight against corruption stepped up: former prime minister Adrian Nastase is the most prominent defendant so far.

It is no small achievement for a country that began its transition in 1989 with a largely obsolete industrial base, scarred not just by half a century of oppression, but by its violent end with the summary execution of its autocratic leader Nicolae Ceausescu and the political turmoil that followed.

This fertile country, the seventh biggest in Europe, sliced by the Carpathian mountains and with an important Black Sea port at Constanta, is building on its traditional strengths in textiles and footwear, light engineering and metallurgy, and diversifying as some €5 billion a year of foreign direct investment floods in. And it is fighting back against the legacy of pollution from its mining operations, which seriously polluted the Danube only a few years ago.

By EU standards the country remains poor. A gross domestic product per person at around $4,500 (€3,480), is less than a sixth of the EU average, and some two million people - around 10% of the population - are officially living in poverty. The Romanian village - notoriously featured in the film Borat - is not typical of the countryside, but is not entirely inaccurate either. Many of the large Roma minority still live in appalling conditions.

The even larger Hungarian minority - estimated at around 1.5 million - has at least enjoyed a permanent seat in government for the last decade. But its high concentration in the Transylvania region, which has been the subject of a centuries-old tug-of-war, and which Hungary ceded after the First World War, has repeatedly led to tensions over language, education and media.

On the eastern edge of the country, different ethnic tensions persist in Moldova, much of which the new state of Romania acquired in the early 20th century. The territory was lost to the Soviet Union after the Second World War and while many Moldovans feel close to Romania (and to Europe), the largely Russian population of Moldova’s breakaway region Transdniestria hankers after closer union with Moscow.

Romania often portrays itself as a Latinate island in a Slavic sea. Its language, its cultural legacy and its dominant Christianity date back to when it was the Roman province of Dacia and subsequently part of the Byzantine empire. It is proud of retaining these links despite the Slav predominance of the middle ages and the centuries of Ottoman supremacy.

Doubtless the lorry drivers now protesting en bloc at the Danube bridge at Gurgiu will soon be rolling again - and later this year work is finally expected to start on another river crossing too. The resolution of this little local difficulty will in itself serve as a small example of the justification for the entire EU enlargement exercise - the easing of transport and communications, closer convergence of regulations, greater common prosperity, the spirit of compromise and enhanced understanding among member states and their populations.

The president

Romania’s president since 2004, 55-year-old Traian Basescu, is a notable advocate of Atlanticism in the Black Sea region and an outspoken critic of his country’s communist past. He is a former ship’s captain - he worked for the Romanian merchant fleet in Antwerp in 1989 and entered active politics only later. He was a member of parliament and a transport minister in several governments during the 1990s and was a key figure in the push to speed up reforms. He was mayor of Bucharest for four years before becoming president and his term of office was marked by continual disputes with central government. His revenge came when he defeated the then prime minister, Adrian Nastase, in the presidential elections. He calls himself a "player president", taking an active role in national politics, which has won him wide public support, but has fuelled tensions even with some of his former political allies - and particularly Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, the current prime minister.

The prime minister

The prime minister of Romania since 2004 is Calin Popescu-Tariceanu. He leads an uneasy coalition with the Democratic Party - the party of President Traian Basescu - which has been driven by the common objective of winning EU accession in 2007. Fresh and early elections in 2007 cannot be ruled out now that goal has been achieved. He trained as a scientist and worked as an engineer, an academic and an entrepreneur - setting up Romania’s first independent radio station in 1990. He entered parliament only in 1996, at the age of 44. He was briefly minister of industry, but it was his work in two successive parliaments and within the National Liberal Party - of which he is now president - that turned him into the successful compromise candidate for prime minister at the head of the reform-minded alliance that was formed during the 2004 election campaign. Popescu-Tariceanu is also a vice-president of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform party.

It has only taken days as a member state for Romania to come under attack for infringing the sacred EU principle of free movement. Despite instructions from the government in Bucharest, its local officials have been maintaining their €60 levy on vehicles entering the only bridge on a key route linking Europe to Turkey across the Danube.