Owlspotting

That’s the question of an opinion piece of mine that just ran this Friday in The New Republic. Unfortunately, you have to pay for TNR Online content, so I copied and pasted the article here.

Is Romania really ready for the EU?
Country Bumpkin

Next week, the European Union’s executive body, a beast that thrives on rules and the enforcement thereof, will decide whether Romania is ready to join next year. This is the final review in a seven-year process whose litmus test remains the adoption of a truckload of regulations dumped at the slopes of the Carpathians. Even though, in 1974, communist Romania became the first Central European country to develop relations with the EU, it wasn’t until 2000 that it was finally invited to sit down and discuss its accession. Now, according to most metrics, Romania is almost on track.

Joining the EU’s 25 member states is a process called “negotiation,” but no country really negotiates the rules of the game–only the minutiae of implementing them. The EU has demanded that Romania fix its justice system, ban international adoptions, eliminate corruption, reform agriculture, and more. With new laws now in place, almost all 31 chapters of “negotiations” have been addressed to the satisfaction of the Union. At the last review in May, the EU had just minor requirements, asking for, among other things, tax-paying mechanisms to match the EU’s, an infrastructure to channel funds to farmers, and improvements in food-safety issues.

But, even if these problems have a legislative fix by the likely accession date of January 2007, that doesn’t mean they’ll be resolved. Agriculture is an emblematic issue. Despite adopting EU regulations, Romania lags behind in treating swine fever and bringing milk to European standards–only 30 percent of the milk currently complies. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Romania might look ready on paper, but it’s not ready on the ground.

That’s because drawing up new regulations is the easy part. Enforcing them in a politically and economically immature society like Romania’s will prove far more difficult. Adrian Lungu, an editor at EurActiv.ro, an online publication dedicated to EU news, says that, although Romania’s legislative structure is more than 90 percent harmonized with the EU’s, “it lacks consistency when it comes to implementing the new laws and creating institutions to cope with the new regulations.”

Corruption, for example, remains a significant problem. In May, the EU praised Romania for progress in cleaning up its government, saying “non-partisan investigations into allegations of high-level corruption have substantially increased.” (Current investigations include 100 or so cases brought against politicians and other public officials for bribery, embezzlement, and influence peddling, though a big catch has yet to be made.) But these grand-scale efforts do little to address the small-time, greasing-the-wheels corruption that affects the daily lives of average Romanians: everything from paying teachers for higher grades to rewarding local clerks for expediting bureaucracy. Studies by Transparency International have consistently indicated that Romanians use bribes to make daily life easier. On a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being “highly clean” Romania’s corruption perception index (CPI) in 2005 was scored by Transparency International at 3. The average among current EU members is 6.7.

The justice system is in a similar state of disarray. An EU readiness review by the Open Society Foundation (OSF) found that many of the statutes under which the Romanian judiciary operates are confusing, and problems continue to exist in areas like the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary, especially concerning the appointment and promotion of judges and prosecutors. Scandals in the last decade highlighted a cozy relationship between the parties in power and the judiciary and have crushed public trust in the rule of law. A January Eurobarometer poll indicated only one-third of Romanians trust the justice system. True justice is such a foreign notion that, the OSF report noted, “[I]t is worrisome that … the defendant’s rights to personal freedom and fair trial are still seen as tricks instead of being considered fundamental procedural rights.”

And then there is the economy. Romania is poorer than any current EU member-state–a country where the average annual income per capita is $7,700. Twenty-five percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Romanians had hoped the EU would improve their financial prospects, but recent news hasn’t been good. The press is predicting a post-accession spike in the price of basic goods like gas, alcohol, and cigarettes–a fate that befell neighboring Hungary following its 2004 accession–which could hit the poor in their pocketbooks and turn them against the European idea.

Potential price hikes are not the only thing affecting the accession readiness of the Romanian psyche, which already displays ambivalence toward the European Union. While politicos talk about money transfer mechanisms, farmers are worried that the EU will impose draconian changes on their way of life: Don’t make your own alcohol; don’t slaughter pigs with your bare hands; don’t grow abnormally large cucumbers. Most of these are myths, but the government has not debunked or explained them in the mainstream press, which loves to fuel firestorms of panic.

Most ominously of all, the majority of Romanians tends to view the EU as a knight in shining armor that will rescue the country from its social and economic ailments. According to the latest Eurobarometer poll, 68 percent of Romanians trust the EU–a level higher than in current member states–and half expressed unhappiness with the present and optimism about their future as part of the body. (By contrast, EU citizens said they are happy with the present and pessimistic about the future.) Romanians, however, are likely to be disappointed. Joining the EU could allow Romanians to work in other countries for better pay, for example, but a recent European debate on immigration has cast a shadow over this possibility. Currently, Great Britain is debating whether to open its borders to Romanians and Bulgarians, and fear of a labor-force migration has prompted other countries to consider restrictions as well.

If the EU doesn’t turn out to be the savior Romanians are expecting, the blow could be fatal to an immature political system. Postponing accession (still a possibility) or disappointment with the reality of being part of the EU might send Romanians running to the extremist parties, which are popular anyway. A recent survey showed that 38 percent of Romanians trust Gigi Becali, a right-wing politician with a heavily nationalistic platform–and the number has been growing.

It’s true that countries always scramble to meet their new requirements in the period just before their accession is approved. But, even by those standards, Romania is not ready. Former chief negotiator Leonard Orban said Romania was a tougher case than the 10 countries that joined in 2004. “You transform the economy, you transform elements of political life, of social life and so on,” he told a Croatian magazine.

That’s a tall order for a spate of dinky regulations. The marriage of Romania and the EU is like the marriage of a grumpy, old-Europe gentleman who built his fortune by following strict rules to a smashing young woman who needs a protector. The trouble is, there’s every indication that she’s not prepared to settle down.