Romania: Relationship troubles

Romania’s close links with France have suffered from disagreement over Iraq – but after a kidnapping in Baghdad, Romanians are no longer sure they want to side with the United States, says Razvan Amariei in Transitions Online.

Romania’s new center-right government is, it seems, changing Romania’s strategic orientation by seeking a closer relationship with the United States and the United Kingdom. President Traian Basescu, in office for just four months, seems determined to impose the new vision even at the cost of a two-century friendship with France.

A few decades ago, Bucharest was known as “Little Paris,” in deference to the city’s architectural heritage but also the strong and visible influence of French culture over its people.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, numerous young Romanians studied in Paris. On their return, they brought with them everything from Western styles in clothing to the liberal ideas that inspired the 1848 revolution. 

Within a few years, French became the second language of Romanian elites. Thousands of French words rapidly entered Romanian and reinforced the Latin heritage, previously threatened by long centuries of Slavic, Turkish, Greek, and Hungarian influence. Literature, art, the law, the school system, the way people spent their spare time – all of these were copied from France too.

This love story continued into the twentieth century. In World War I, Romania fought alongside France, Britain, and the Russian Empire despite the German origins of its kings. Before World War II, Romania was still an ally of France and Britain, but after seeing what happened to Czechoslovakia and Poland, the government switched its allegiance to Germany. But even as a German ally, Romanian troops never fought the Western allies and were only deployed on the eastern front, against the Red Army.

Even during five decades of communist rule, the relationship between Romania and France was peaceful and serene. And when the Ceausescu era ended, France was among the first countries to assist Romania as it sought to enter NATO and the EU.

Romania became a member of NATO in 2002 and signed the accession treaty with the EU on 25 April 2005; it is likely to enter the EU on 1 January 2007.

End of a romance

But this seemingly perfect relationship is beginning to grow stale. The most recent evidence came in a story published by the Financial Times on 19 April. According to reporter George Parker, President Basescu “warned France to stop lecturing his country over its close links with London and Washington.”

The article said Basescu wanted to form a “special relationship” with the United States and Britain to improve security in the Black Sea region. 

Romania was one of a host of Eastern European countries – EU aspirants or new members – that sent troops to Iraq. This prompted French President Jacques Chirac to complain that “New Europe” had missed an opportunity to shut up over Iraq. 

According to the Financial Times, the Romanian leader believes Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, recently made matters worse when he commented Basescu didn’t have “a European reflex.”

Basescu told the daily, “Romania is a country which has respect for itself. France is one of our main supporters, but at the same time we do not like these kinds of declarations.”

In the same article, Romanian prime minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu expressed his concern that France might reject the new EU constitution in a referendum in May, which might complicate the entry of Bulgaria and Romania, who just signed a treaty of accession with the EU on 23 April. 

A spokesperson for the presidency denied on the day the article appeared that Basescu had made the remarks about France. 

But an article in the French daily Le Figaro suggested the denial was made after Paris put pressure on the government in Bucharest. According to the French daily, the French minister for Europe, Claude Haignere, rebuked her Romanian counterpart, Ene Dinga, who happened to be on a visit to Paris, and demanded a refutation, which was promptly issued. 

The Financial Times story was not the first criticism the outspoken Basescu directed at France.

In October 2004, while he was still the mayor of Bucharest and the leader of the Justice and Truth Alliance (DA), Basescu harshly attacked the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

“He came to Romania to take his quota,” Basescu said, referring to the contracts signed during the visit: the Romanian natural gas distributor Distrigaz Sud was acquired by Gaz de France for 311 million euros ($402 million), while the French building company Vinci received without tender a contract for a 380 million euro ($491 million) motorway section in the Carpathians.

The Bucharest daily Evenimentul Zilei quoted him as saying, “The Americans obtained without tender a multi-billion euro contract for building a motorway in Transylvania, the Germans got a one billion euro contract for developing the border security system after the visit of Chancellor [Gerhard] Schroeder, and, with this procedure of satisfying everybody, the Romanian government made a gift to France too.”

The Vinci contract was cancelled when Basescu and his party came to power, the border security project was renegotiated, but the biggest deal, a contract with the U.S. giant Bechtel, is going ahead, though with a reduced budget.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.