1. Government - Romania's European accession
1. Government - Romania's European accession

Summary/Abstract: Split between its desire to join the EU and the necessities of regional security that Europe has not been able to address so far, Romania is facing hard choices in the years to come. However, the Politics section points out that it will be difficult to deal with these external challenges if the domestic policymaking and administrative capacity continue to remain low (arguably, the lowest among candidate countries). SAR used the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act as a test case of general administrative capacity, and found out that Romanian public institutions function at about half the efficiency of their Bulgarian counterparts. Without good and efficient domestic institutions, even EU financial assistance can hardly make a difference. The issue of “absorption capacity” of these funds has been debated with much passion, but no conclusive arguments have been presented to the public so far. For the first time, we break the silence on this matter and show that the problem is significant, point out where the real institutional bottleneck

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