The report “10 years later. The state of democracy in Romania: a future issue on the EU agenda? was launched during the “Renew Europe” event entitled “The Liberal Paradigm for the Modernization of Romania” which is planned to be published and discussed in Brussels. We want to draw attention to the danger that another member state, Romania, will fall into a certain form of authoritarianism, which will have serious consequences for the EU.

In fact, these days we have witnessed a reaffirmation of the reasons for concern outlined in the report. The new DNA criminalizes the EU’s vaccination mechanism. Moreover, he does this by blaming former minister Vlad Voiculescu because he did not do something, not because he did something. Although the decision was not his.

The decision to order more vaccines than the population was made by the President of the European Commission, Klaus Iohannis. Applying the principle of crisis management without regrets: not knowing which ones will be viable, you order more. We all remember how scared we were then and how we tried to vaccinate. Instead, Johannis, Chuke and Helvig created special vaccination centers to have priority. And the parties of death – PSD and AUR – erau then and now I am hysterical about this topic. Then there was a fear that there would not be enough vaccines. Now they incriminate those who are undecided.

A scheme created at the European level. The President of the Commission with Yohannis at the table.

At the domestic level, the executive decision rested with Army Colonel Valeriu Georgit, a current employee of the NDI (was it still the NDI then?), and the political decision rested with the Prime Minister.

In practice, Romania could simply refuse. And of all the successive refusal options, the DNA prosecutor decides that all of them are in order, except for those taken by the former ministers of the USSR. Those directly involved in the case, Klaus Iohannis, Nicolae Chuke or Valeriu Giorgita, are not even witnesses in the case.

This is a vivid example of selective justice. And the way the case is presented is a blatant, true miscarriage of justice. How can DNA calculate damages of 1 billion euros when Romania paid a total of less than half a billion euros for vaccines (Rafil now says)? Of which most doses were used, donated or resold.

Because in the conditions when Romania is rapidly moving towards bankruptcy, the only chance for the survival of the PSD government is the rhetoric “to blame the UDR”. “Romania has budget problems because USR spent money on vaccines.”

Is it the GDR’s fault that they are bringing the country to bankruptcy today, in 2023? And this is their tip in 2024: a campaign based on anti-European ideas.

The following report presents the whole context of this degradation of democracy in Romania. And we will do everything in our power to convey this reality to those who can contribute to ending the undemocratic regime we are witnessing.

“10 years later. The state of democracy in Romania: a future issue on the EU agenda?

In recent years, I have witnessed Deepening of the crisis of liberal democracy in Europe, a crisis fueled by the rise of populism. This has challenged national political narratives in many EU member states and put increasing pressure on the democratic foundation built by the European project. In this context, the European Union does not need only new problems in a member state. Still, it’s great to start this discussion before the problem becomes irreversible.

For a long time, Poland and Hungary were perceived as the crows of Europe. Romania, on the other hand, seemed to be an exception in the region: with major problems, democracy was still coming to an end. For the first time, Romania was not one of the weak points of the European Union. And yet, unlike the previous USL moment and the Dragny moment, this time the attack on democracy was carefully orchestrated and kept in the shadows.

In 2021, PSD and PNL formed a broad coalition that gradually took over the state. The system itself changes the rules of the game in its favor. We are witnessing the development of a facade democrats as disturbing as Viktor Orbán’s system, and borrowing on a smaller scale Russian features of governance developed under Putin: the dominance of the state by special services, the creation of system-controlled media and “opposition” zones, for example.

Aggressive attitudes towards civil society, intrusive secret services, alarming obstacles to press independence, persecution of the democratic opposition and, most recently, disregard for the legislative framework for budget control – all these are alarming signals about the state of democracy in Romania. Which is rapidly deteriorating, because the grand coalition is in a hurry to close the 2024 election year by any means.

Sustaining Front Democracy: An Orchestrated Triad Behind the Scenes

How is it that Romania has maintained a certain reputation in the region despite these alarming signals? To begin with, compared to other countries in the region, democratic progress in Romania has always been fueled from the bottom up by the efforts of citizens and civil society. I have always been better on such indicators as respect for liberal values, the influence of civil society, or popular support for international organizations. The state was always right, the Romanians were the ones who created hopes for democracy in Romania. The protests, which occurred in response to government violations, fostered the belief that elected officials are incentivized to adhere strictly to the fundamental principles of democracy and the expectations of citizens.

On the other hand, indicators such as access to information, the fight against corruption or the independence of the judicial system register noticeable downward trends, as the political parties in power begin to increasingly block the democratic mechanisms that the country fought for. it is so difficult to implement them within the framework of the process of accession to the European Union.

In addition, the degradation of the democratic state is not so obvious because for some time Romania benefited from the change of power determined by the elections, so that no single party was able to consolidate its power in the state for a long time. Instead, the shifts were provided by the same two parties, which subsequently worked in unison.

In recent years, there has been a marked decline in political pluralism, caused by a association de facto PNL and PSDwhich acts as a single party, at the initiative and under the control of three persons, triad: President Klaus Iohannis, Prime Minister Marcel Cholaku (both acting as PNL and PSD leaders respectively) and former SRI head Eduard Helwig. Up to a certain point, their actions may seem like part of the usual political game. However, as will be argued below, the consolidation of the PSD-PNL open-ended regime goes much further, enough to suggest that the System is already acquiring the characteristics of a facade democracy. This is such a common state of affairs in the ex-communist world outside the EU that Romania’s descent into such a regime would represent, on a historical scale, a common statistical trend: a fragile democracy that cannot withstand once-favorable international context changes.

Whereas in the cases of Hungary and Poland attack on democracy personified by such political figures as Viktor Orban or Yaroslav Kaczynski in Romania, triad from Romania allows the created system to be less understandable from the outside. However, the close and yet shadowy cooperation between the three leaders through the secret services makes the Romanian problem even more worrisome. Because it is not about a specific person, but about the entire structure of the exercise of power. To maintain appearances, this structure needs a good image in Europe, so the leaders involved resort to various ways to wash their image in the capitals of the Union.

To better understand how this is established facade democracythis analysis will reveal different stories from the lives of people trapped in this system, in which political arbitrariness and institutional abuses change the rules of democracy and nullify the expectations set by the rule of law and democratic mechanisms.

Continuation of the report on Liberal community.