The state vs. its citizens: a note on Romania, Europe, and corruption

Abstract

According to most accounts from home and abroad, Romania is a corrupt country. Journalists, civic activists and public prosecutors suspect every top politician, past and present, of either committing or planning to commit a felony. As far as any knowledgeable Romanian can tell, the European Commission itself is the inspiration behind the current official anti-corruption drive. Ten years ago, discussion of wider powers for prosecutors and intelligence agents would have seemed inappropriate, even indecent, reminders of the Stalinist secret police, while state prosecutions of conspicuously wealthy politicians evoke memories of communist witch-hunts against owners of private property. How could the European Commission ostensibly support Romania's use of judicial proceedings so reminiscent of the communist era? After the collapse of state socialism, western leaders were unable or unwilling to recognise that decades of communism had transformed many institutions of state. Courts, Parliament, government and the army had all been shaped by more than 40 years of suppressed civil and political liberties, radical social engineering and inhibited economic activity. The Romanian legal system, designed under communism, still works as an instrument of the state. A citizen is considered as good as guilty from the moment he or she is denounced in the press or prosecutors begin an investigation. The Romanian justice system creates corruption as a necessary enemy of the state. Larger-than-life corruption appears thus to serve a political purpose in Romania's relations with the EU. It is a smoke-screen that helps both sides to explain away obvious economic and political disparities between this country and the rest of the union. If corruption were uprooted, Romania would become a country much like any other EU member. Corruption has become a political commodity that helps Romanian and European policy makers alike to evade analysis of what is really necessary to achieve representative democracy, the rule of law and liberal citizenship in post-communist Romania.