The Romanian Secret Services, Politics and the Media: a Structural Overview
The Romanian Secret Services, Politics and the Media: a Structural Overview

Summary/Abstract: Balkanalysis.com Editor’s note: Although Communism is long gone in EU-member Romania, one particularly fascinating part of that lurid past – the role of the secret services in public life – still draws attention, as the following informative study reveals. One of the most important problems that Romania had to address once communism collapsed in 1989 was how to deal with the legacy of its infamous Securitate- the all-pervasive Department of State Security. Although much of that legacy has been dealt with since then, the discussion and debate over security sector reform in general continues today. While numerous politicians, journalists, scholars, Romanian and non-Romanian alike, stress that Romania would need to confront many obstacles in order to bring the reform of the secret services to the desired end, relevant legislation remains under consideration and no final solutions have been reached. A brief overview of the services, and the use or misuse of them by media and politics today, indicates the topic’s continuing significance in Romanian public discourse and public life, more than two decades after the toppling of the communist regime.

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