Romania - part of the EU's Eastern Frontier: opportunities versus responsibilities

Abstract

After 2007 Romania became one of the eastern frontier states of the European Union. This double status of national state and frontier state comes itself with both the responsibility of keeping a high level of security for the EU’s border, and at the same time it can be seen as an opportunity for the Romanian state of increasing its regional power inside and outside the organization. At the same time, the Eastern non-EU member states seemed to be caught in the middle between the Russian Federation and the EU, fact that affected their national security level and tended to create a fragmentation within the EU. After its integration in the European structures, Romania’s strategy was constructed around the aspect of supporting and promoting the Republic of Moldova’s EU integration. The present paper analyses this double status of Romania and its possible effects.