How foreigners see us / A message for Romanians who consume the political crisis as if it were the end of the world

Romania seen by the serious press from outside looks like an ordinary European country, neither better nor worse than the others in the EU. A country that goes through political crises, just like the other countries. Romanians are no more extremist, naive or corrupt than the French, the Dutch or the Germans. The imminent catastrophe, the hysteria and the end of the world can only be seen from Romania.

The publication Politico from Brussels publishes today an article about the political crisis in Romania, entitled “How to watch the political chaos in Romania like a professional”. I did an exercise in imagination and read it as if it were about any other European country. I tried to ignore the fact that I live in Romania, and the political crisis affects me directly.

“The brutal austerity measures adopted over the past year to reduce Romania's budget deficit have hurt the popularity of the center-left and liberal politicians promoting these reforms. And Simion's nationalists now see an opportunity to take advantage of this,” writes Politico.

There are a few lines that may be enough for foreign readers to understand what is happening in Romania and then move on to other topics of interest.

But Politico makes a serious analysis: it mentions, for example, that Romania has a deadline until August to carry out the reforms it committed to “to unlock 11 billion euros from European funds and analysts fear that the government's difficulties in controlling public finances could downgrade the credit rating”.

The publication from Brussels also writes that our country has “an independent centrist president”, and about the electorate AUR / Călin Georgescu notes: “Many Romanians are deeply skeptical of democracy and the authorities that lead the institutions of their country and believe that the far-right leader (no-Călin Georgescu) was the victim of a conspiracy”. This is about the annulment of the elections in Romania, which, indeed, has never happened in another EU country.

But if you ignore this paragraph, you could very well say that you are reading an article about any other European country where extremist parties are doing well in the polls.

Journalists from Politico even recognize the importance of Romania on the map of the European Union:

“With a resident population of approximately 19 million inhabitants, Romania is an important player of the EU, being strategically located on the eastern edge of the community bloc, on the border with Ukraine.”

The conclusion of the article would be that, although this political crisis does not do Romania any good, there is no real danger for the populists to reach the government, and George Simion is rather aiming to win the parliamentary elections in 2028 or the presidential elections in 2030. “The organization of early elections is generally considered unlikely,” says Politico.

“But is the president really on a team with Bolojan?”

Maybe the journalists in Brussels are wrong, and in the coming days the apocalypse is upon us. On the other hand, if you follow Romanian websites, social media and TV news every night you see that the apocalypse is already here. We are already destroyed economically and never leave port again.

What foreign journalists often miss is that Romanians have an extraordinary talent for consuming their political crises like the end of the world. They are easily disappointed, imagine scenarios of betrayal and quickly grow to hate their politicians, including the ones they voted for.

“Calm down and we'll get through it,” said the president “mediator” Nicușor Dan, after the first consultations in Cotroceni. But he did it with a detachment that, instead of calming, rather annoyed his supporters.

I would have expected him to stick more with the team with which he won last year's elections, considering that, however, “Ilie Bolojan premier” was Nicușor Dan's important presidential project. But is the president really on a team with Bolojan, or is this actually where he's trying to build a team? We will see in the coming days.

We all probably have too high expectations of politicians, and when they are not met we think that a catastrophe is imminent.

Unfortunately, we have had few politicians who rose to the occasion. But we had plenty of political crises, with knives on the table. We have never crashed, or maybe others have let us crash. We often forget who we are and how others see us. To quote, again, from Politico: “With a resident population of approximately 19 million inhabitants, Romania is an important EU player, being strategically located on the eastern edge of the EU bloc, on the border with Ukraine.”

I propose that we never forget this.

HotNews journalists Gabriel Bejan and Laurentiu Ungureanu put the pros and cons arguments face to face to try to answer one of the important questions of this period: did the president correctly manage the political crisis in Romania?