Post-Accession Romania: Between Persistent Conflicts and Nationalism
Post-Accession Romania: Between Persistent Conflicts and Nationalism

Summary/Abstract: Since Romania’s accession to the European Union on 1 January 2007, internal conflicts have intensified, voters’ interest in politics has diminished, and bilateral relations with the country’s eastern neighbours have got more complicated. At the same time, traditional animosity with Hungary has mellowed, even while the claims of ethnic Hungarian elites have become more insistent. The acceptance of Romania into the EU seems to have been the last common aim of the country’s politicians, the very last goal about which the Romanian political class succeeded in forging a national consensus. On completion of this task, however, Romania’s political elites did not endeavour to try and find another common project that might be able to harness their administrative, legislative, civic and intellectual energies. They chose instead to revert to their own group interests, and in so doing risked incurring multiple fragmentation at the bureaucratic and political levels, but also at the level of public opinion. Neither the government, nor the political parties, nor Parliament had prepared a post-accession strategy aimed at synchronizing the country with its fellow EU states, or at implementing a transition to another stage of social, economic and political development.

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