The British reaction to the horsemeat scandal in which Romania has been unjustly accused, before the completion of a probe, shows that the Brits are far from getting rid of stereotypes. Someone who is not aware of the realities of our country and also ignores the traditional approach of British media, unfortunately not just the tabloids who favour gross drama over facts and fiction – as creative as it may be – over the verified and corroborated information, would have an appalling image of…

On Wednesday, as the EPP leaders were being greeted with a poor taste glitter for a country like Romania and with a lot of humbleness by Traian Basescu and (his) party, PDL, to the very place that happens to be called the People’s House, I had the chance to meet a young historian while I was visiting the National History Museum. After an impeccable presentation, the guide, who demonstrated a rare erudition, drew the conclusion that ‘Romanians have always needed masters’, being incapable of…

We often hear public voices on the side of Western or local supporters of President Traian Basescu say that in Romania there is a danger – as they call it – of a dictatorship of the majority. The Parliament – the institution which directly represents the will of the voters, the main forum of democracy in a country – is subject to daily tough criticism just because USL ‘dared’ unseat the last government of the Basescu-PDL regime, changing the parliamentary majority. Traian Basescu’s…

These years, Romania has become the scene of economic, public health and – of late – political experiments, meant to be later multiplied in other states of the European Union (EU), more than likely related to the increasingly clear and abrupt shaping of the EU federalisation project.The first experiment was the policy of austerity and annihilation of the social state. This experiment, initiated in 2009 with the EUR 21 bln loan from the IMF, the European Commission and the World Bank,…