Photos: Lucian Oprea
In June, Poland voted to join the European Union. It signed a treaty that would bring it into the Union along with Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. Membership will create a closer alliance with larger countries, there will be fewer restrictions on border crossings and the alliance is expected to improve Poland’s economy, which has suffered from high unemployment and government corruption scandals. Romania has been plagued with the same problems since the revolution in 1989 and would also like the benefits of the European Union.
“The economy is not improving steadily and uniformly,” said Mircea Fotino, a semiretired professor at the University of Colorado and the president of the Romanian American Freedom Alliance. Fotino says the unemployment in Romania is 9 percent or 10 percent and the economy is burdened by industries that were created under communism and employ far more people than are needed to get the job done. The economy is in contrast to the richness of the country. “There’s oil, there’s agriculture, there’s mining, there’s tourism,” Fotino says, but the industry is burdened by these “white elephants.” The government, says Fotino, is similarly burdened by a strong desire to be capitalistic but has a poor understanding of how to make it work. “Joining the European Union is the only way the formats of the Western economy could be adapted in Romania. Otherwise they don’t have the experience,” Fotino says.
To join the European Union, a country must make that decision and adhere to a number of laws and regulations as well as social reforms. “You’ve got to have a tax like the tax in other countries,” says Sven Steinmo, a professor of political science at CU and the director of the De Tocqueville Center. “Civil and environmental laws have to be in concert with the laws of the other countries. You have to have clear property rights.” These are especially difficult for post-communist countries, he says. Joining the European Monetary Union is another possibility for Romania. Although the euro is the common currency of the countries of the EU, it is not a requirement that a member country use the euro. Of the current 15 member countries of the EU, four do not use the euro: Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Greece. Areas of Romania and other countries currently accept the euro even though they are not in the EU. Steinmo likens the EU accepting Romania to the United States accepting Mexico into our union. “The poor countries tend to be more corrupt and lax in regulations,” he says. “They have to make their countries more modern and more democratic. That’s one of the reasons they want to become part of the EU, to become more modern, advanced and rich.”
There are areas in Romania where people plow their fields with oxen; many of the factories operate like they are in the 1950s instead of the 21st century; and corruption seems to be rampant. “It’s unfortunately such an old habit,” says Ileana Barbu, an art teacher at the Colorado Art Academy in Boulder who has been in the United States for 13 years. “I think it started two hundred years ago. As long as the government is corrupt, nothing will change.” Mihail Codrescu notes the effect of corruption on his small business, importing traditional Romanian clothing to the United States to the Boulder area. “The biggest problem in trying to do business with them is corruption,” he says. “If you go in there and need approvals, you’re going to need to bribe. And that’s at all levels.”
Silvia Mioc, a physicist at Datex-Ohmeda in Louisville, was able to use that corruption to get out of Romania before the revolution. “My mother was a doctor. She had the right connections and knew where to pay some bribes.”
