MAY 9TH - EUROPE DAY Europeans when it comes to obligations, not to rights

Klaus Iohannis is concerned with the local elections, while the head of his government, Dacian Cioloş, tells us that healthcare has been his "top" priority, while the head of the Ministry of Healthcare - Cadariu Achimaş Patriciu - is imagining he is in the midst of a James Bond film, in a nationwide conspiracy against him, because the hospitals are washing their floors with disinfectant duller than dishwater.

All this, in a country which belongs to the European Union, where citizens are required to be "Europeans", nice and obedient. According to standards!

You need to pay your taxes. OK. But how? You go to the tax administration, you stand in line... stand some more ... even more... maybe you had something else to do!... You wait some more. At the counter, you stand high odds of being faced with one of the following situations: 1. You are told, in a irritated-yelling tone, that you made a mistake in filling out the forms and you need to start over; 2. You are told, in a irritated-yelling tone, that you've waited in line at the wrong counter, you go to wait in another line... You need to be very careful, to get all the information in advance. Any mistake is going to cost you and no one is there to guide you, after all "caring for the citizen" is not part of the job description.

An adventure!

The EU only exists outside the counter, beyond that is "the state".

And the state is never the EU.

State-owned companies are among the highest debtors ... to the state! Penalties accrue, they are blowing up the counter, but "It is what it is, what can we do?" The EU only exists outside the door.

It's the same at the hospital's gate ... The janitor, who has just washed the floor with water rather than with disinfectant, yells at you to get you to go around the wet portions of floor, the elevator lady has her own "norms", which do not take the EU into account, diseases or problems ... She's a yeller too, if you don't follow her unwritten rules, which you could only know if you were a mind reader.

In Romania, the EU even stops on the edge of green areas: "Don't step on the grass!" Here, unlike the hospital or the Tax administration, at least there is an indicator. Or a guardian, paid out of public money to guard the grass, ready to snap their head off as well and to fine them!

It doesn't matter that in all European countries, you can have picnics in parks, (not barbecues!), people are allowed to sit directly on the grass... and read.

The one place where you find the EU is the bank.

To be fair, banks are private institutions.

Over there, you are addressed in an unctuous tone! Banks package products that no one understands, but which they tell you that you really, really need, and then, if you run into trouble, it is your fault for not having read the fine-print paragraph on page 58, but which you accepted by signing. You were supposed to be an attorney, analyst, notary, like any intelligent citizen in the EU, as if the EU were only there for lawyers, analysts and notaries. Bankers don't have any responsibility, as if that were the way it goes in the EU.

The state is part of the EU only when it takes on "copy-paste" legislation without giving the least thought to the local situation, without responsibility and without remorse.

We have the "bail-in" (ed. note: the law which allows troubled banks to save themselves with depositors' money), pigs have to be "anesthetized" before the slaughter, cows have to be milked using a specific procedure. Animals have chips.

We do all of those things, we are obedient and tamely!

But, to the state, it is not a problem that we have infections in hospitals, boorish teachers in schools, traffickers as customs officers, criminals disguised as policemen, corrupt politicians, mobsters holding public offices. It's not a problem that we pay ten times more than Germany for disinfectant that gets diluted, even though our purchasing power doesn't match that of Germany.

Perhaps that is the case with the EU standard which the Romanian state follows, with all its employees - diluted tenfold and ten times more expensive!

The locals can go to hell!

Long live Europe!