Europe
European Union: not thinking about tomorrow because I am afraid of today
This is not an academic paper. This is just an opinion. When I am writing about my own country I believe that I have a privileged position: I do not have to use quotes from official documents or newspapers, instead I must transfer my own experience into words and ideas.
The wounds of the past
At the end of 1989 Romania faced a violent crisis. In national and international media this crisis is described as being a revolution. It was a messy, bloody and violent moment. During those days, regular people sacrificed their lives for ideas like democracy and freedom. 20 years apart, Romanians are asking themselves: What happened in the meantime? How and when we managed to sabotage our society and the entire system?
If you truly want to understand the current concerns of the Romanian society there is a rapid way to do it: use public transport. The majority of conversations about the current situation of our society are concentrated around words and expressions like: corruption; I do not trust them; I hope that he is the lesser evil. Many Romanians are feeling powerless. They feel that the odds are always against them, they believe that the government forsaken them. And they are entitled to feel this way: the minimum wage is around 190 euros and this is not enough, especially if you are living in a big city like Bucharest.
We had a dream…
After 1989 Romania had two major objectives: to be accepted in NATO and to become a member of the European Union. After many years, negotiations and reforms we managed to achieve both of them (NATO accepted us in 2004 and the European Union in 2007). Now it feels that we do not have another compass for the future, a blueprint for the next 20-30 years and a society which does not have a strategic mindset will eventually collapse.
Romania is a small country with small military capabilities and a skinny soft power architecture. We like it or not, it is quite difficult for us to impose our vision abroad. NATO and EU membership boosted this position but until this moment Romania used these leveraged positions not too many times. I would like to offer you an example here. One of the many advantages offered by the EU membership position are the European funds. You can use them for everything: from education to infrastructure and cultural activities. There are good projects and ideas which were crafted using European money. Projects like Roma professionals in the medical field (during this project young ethnic students with excellent academic results received a scholarship) are offering a temporary boost for the society, but this is not good enough. We are wasting European money. There are examples of organizations which are writing European projects like a fire sale. One of the biggest problems in this area is the lack of accountability and transparency. When there is no real accountability corruption spreads like wild fire.
The European Union offered many positive things for Romania. Think about the Erasmus Programme, or about the fact that you can travel without a passport: small or big things, they all improved our lives. The biggest issue is that we cannot truly understand what European citizenship means because we still need to learn what democracy is. For the majority of the population the hardships of the present are too heavy to think about something else, to try to understand things like active citizenship, democracy or social responsibility.
Democracy does not come with the right to take what you want when you want it. In 1989 people died not for a new law of the jungle, they fought and died for something different. In 2007 the EU accepted us – the promised land was here finally. We used our freedoms and invaded Western Europe: this is a natural thing, people are moving across the borders in order to shape a new living standard for them and their families.
…and in our quest for it we lost ourselves
The are is a quote about Romanians. It sounds like: far too many Romanians are living for pleasure rather for rights. The pleasure to vote a certain politician because his staff offered you as a bribe a bucket and a bread, rather than the right to vote for somebody who has a political platform and a real vision. The pleasure to mock a police officer after you hit somebody and you are released because you do not represent a public menace.
Romania has two sides and is difficult to say that the European membership offered us only positive or only negative things. Like any other thing from our world the perspective always matters. At the end of the day we should focus more on us, as a society in order to improve our social skills as a community. You can be a community without being a nation but you cannot be a nation without being a community.
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