“A leader is a dealer in hope”. I believe Napoleon said that. The spectacular Obama campaign and his likely imminent victory seem to prove him right. Sometimes I wonder if Romanian politicians are aware of that. Traian Basescu seemed to be aware of that in December 2004, when he defeated Adrian Nastase. People Hoped. People [...]
In the aftermath of the report issued by the European Commission on the Romanian justice system and fight against corruption, many comments and interpretations have emerged in the Romanian press . This was to be expected. One of the most prominent debates stirred by the report these days is about the re-confirmation of Daniel Morar [...]
Today the European Commission released the monitoring reports on Romania and Bulgaria, foreseen by the “cooperation and verification mechanism”. On the whole, not many surprises: the rough tone that was expected, telling off the two countries for the very small (if existing) progress regarding judicial reform and fight against corruption. This time, Bulgaria is more [...]
A short reminder for the European Commission that will issue the progress report for Romania next week, dealing with the progress made in judicial reform and the fight against corruption … safeguard clauses, anyone? (check here for the so called Cooperation and Verification Mechanism) Click here to watch the video. (Hat tip to The Short [...]
The summer break is over. Slowly, the Brussels xpat crowd is coming back from holiday. I just started deleting blog spam….it is incredible what kind of spam you get these days! It used to be only the obvious things about different medications and various operations, as well as dating opportunities…but now they started making compliments: [...]
Last week the political crisis in Romania truly escalated. A few weeks ago I posted a general introduction on the nature of politics in Romania and the fight between President Basescu and PM Tariceanu. Now, President Basescu is suspended from office and there will be a referendum on May 19 (unusual for elections: a Saturday [...]
Romania joined the EU a few months ago but not too much is known of Romanian politics in the rest of Europe. Only Vadim Tudor managed to get some press coverage in Brussels by helping to set up the Independent Tradition Sovereignty (ITS) group in the European Parliament. But nobody seems to care about what [...]
What is the problem of universities in Romania? I am sure everybody who studied in Romania could come up with some very interesting points when answering this question. At least for me the lack of basic academic approaches is more than obvious. Nobody questions the lousy teaching, the badly equipped libraries, corruption, the widely spread [...]



