FT.com
"Europe opens the door to an unreformed Romania
By Tom Gallagher
The European Union has never been good at persuading Romanian politicians to swallow its harsh medicine and purge the country of the abuses that have made the 15 years since the end of communism years of lost opportunity for reform. On September 26, it decided to offer full membership from next January in the hope that overdue measures to ensure clean government will be pushed through by next spring.
But will an elite mainly composed of ex-communist businessmen be impressed by its threat of exclusion from parts of the treaty for non-compliance? I doubt it. They showed their boldness on September 8 when the Romanian parliament refused to pass a bill obliging 100,000 public officials and elected politicians to disclose the extent and origins of their wealth and allow strict oversight. Romania is due to receive €30bn from Brussels between now and 2012 and there are fears that instead of modernising the country, it will prove an incentive for corruption on an undreamt of scale. There are many ways to drain away public money to networks of politicians who often double as businessmen."
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