Demagogy, A Solution?

Although he had childishly minimized the proportion of the crisis between Romania and The European Union only a few days before, the Prime minister got on a plane and rushed to Brussels in quite a remarkable hurry. This appears to be a decision befitting the harsh implications of Brussels' sudden change of tone towards Romania shortly after the debate sparked by the report on Romania presented by The Foreign Affairs Committee of The European Parliament.

Whom did the Romanian Prime minister take with him to Brussels to convince his negotiation partners that, finally, at the last moment, something was going to change for the better? In order not to go "empty-handed,' he took with him the two dignitaries in charge of foreign policies: the Foreign minister and the chief negotiator with The E.U. The three brave Euronauts were politely received by the president of The European Commission, the European commissioner on Enlargement and the president of The European Parliament. Quite a day, indeed! Nonetheless, after they were politely shown in to the offices of the aforementioned dignitaries, the Romanian delegation was kindly invited to... keep quiet. More precisely, to listen to what some of the highest ranking European officials had to say. Well, what the Romanian officials were told did not exactly sound new, but rather very familiar. Just as if they had cross-checked their lines beforehand, the three European dignitaries made direct and very similar references to Baroness Nicholson's report with the kind of coordination one might expect from the Three Tenors during a performance at the Scala! In other words, the message was something like "if you didn't hear us clearly enough from Bucharest, it's a good thing you're here so we can say it to your face: enough is enough! Either you start standing by your commitments, and not just on paper, with all the effort and muscle of your hyper-politicized government and administration, or you can forget about the year 2007!' And, since they were not exactly allowed to say too much to their interlocutors in Brussels, the Romanian delegation held press conferences for the pet-journalists they had brought to Brussels with them, at the taxpayers' expense, to tell the story of the latest "success' of the P.S.D. government.

They told the press conference, in great detail, that the views expressed by E.U. officials were basically worthless and that, should those views have significance after all, that significance could only be that Brussels saluted the wise policies applied with revolutionary consistency by The Nastase Government.

Since their mere presence in Brussels did not produce the desired result, our brave officials pulled out the second trump out of their sleeve, hoping to leave Brussels speechless: "The plan for updating and expediting the application of the 500 plans and 200 strategies that The Right Honorable Government has launched since it took office with a view to concluding negotiations with The E.U. in the shortest time possible." What a devastating effect that trump card had! The E.U. had been clueless as to how lucrative The Romanian Government had actually been in terms of making up plans, measures and strategies. A new plan, a masterplan, synthesizing all other plans and bringing forth yet another package of measures could only be a masterpiece!

What an ungrateful, unappreciative, insensitive world! The good ol' trick with the plan that becomes another plan that becomes a strategy that becomes a plan to update the updated plan and to expedite the set of measures designed to implement the change of plan was something no one could comprehend! Well, not everybody was schooled by the Party to master the art of inventing plans rea-ching as high as godly perfection! The European dignitaries looked long and hard at their visitors from Bucharest, shook their head in disproval and went about their business. ...Though not before bidding the Romanian delegation good riddance and "great many successes, comrades!" For the E.U. officials are not completely unfamiliar with the past and present of communism in Romania. Instead of having gone all the way to Brussels for nothing, the Romanian dignitaries might have tried doing something in Bucharest. Instead of trying to show us how wide open the gates of the European institutions were, the Prime minister would have been better off staying home. Perhaps he should have reshuffled the Cabinet dismissing all those who, denying the obvious, have made it their habit to tell off E.U. officials by saying everything in Romania is peachy and that a legal system as beautiful as ours the world has never seen! Perhaps it would not have been a bad idea to present Parliament with a detailed evaluation of the accession process and the related problems. Perhaps he should have considered assembling a crisis management cabinet to take over the integration business and conclude negotiations by the year-end, while forgetting about everything else. In other words, the only way The Government could have stopped the credibility hemorrhage triggered by The Nicholson Report would have been to get down to business. Here, not in Brussels!