Bucharest, 06/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - The Bureau of the EPP-ED group of the European Parliament met in Bucharest on 2 and 3 June to discuss the political situation on the ground and reforms underway ahead of Romania's accession to the EU, under the presidency of the leader of the EPP-ED group of the Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering (see EUROPE 8961 on the letters of warning about the pace of reform, which were sent by the Commission to Romania and also to Bulgaria). It is clear that Romania still has a lot of work to do, but Lorenzo Cesa, the group's vice president, said that he was "quite clear" on the government's willingness to stand firm in this delicate phase. Jonathan Scheele, representing the European Commission's delegation to Romania, said that "Romania can come into line with its commitments in its own time, but it cannot waste the time that remains to it and must speed up reforms. Otherwise, the Commission will not hesitate to recommend that its accession be delayed to 2008". Leonard Orban, the Romanian negotiator in chief, said that Romania had started negotiating with a false image of the EU, and it was only later that it understood what an in-depth transformation accession would require it to make. During the negotiations, conditions have become more and more difficult, but "it was in our interests to set the bar higher and higher", he said. On the impact of the French and Dutch "no" to the European Constitution, Mr Orban said that "there is no link between accession and the ratification of the Constitution, but it is clear that will be that more pressure will be brought to bear, and that the EU's requirements will be more strict".
At a session given over to the commitments taken by Romania on such issues as human rights and justice and home affairs, the vice president of EPP-ED group Othmar Karas, said that "Romania has 18 months left to continue its efforts (...), and this will be much easier if its good friends show it what to do". Mario Mauro, EP vice president, spoke of the MEPs' concerns about the situation in Romania regarding political rights, freedom of religion especially for the Greek Catholic minority), the rights of minors, the problem of abandoned children (4000 a year, according to UNICEF), the sanitation situation for minorities and discrimination against the Roma community. Kinga Gal of Hungary, vice president of the EP's delegation to the joint EU Romania parliamentary committee of the EP, noted that accession to the EU will certainly improve the situation of the minorities and called upon the Romanian government to allow the Roma minority to have a "vision of their own future", by recognising their right to self governance, the restoration of property, the option of having their own universities to develop their own elite ( a measure which will also concern some 1.5 million Hungarians in Romania). The reform underway in the field of justice was presented in detail by the Romanian Justice Minister Monica Luisa Macovei, who stressed the objectives of independence, transparency and predictability, while stressing that "conditions exist in legal terms, but independence is, above all, a state of mind". On this subject, Alexandre Herlea, the former minister for European integration, said that reforms will be in vain if those holding the power are members of the former Nomenklatura, a "mob which makes the rules up as it goes along".
In his conclusions, Hans-Gert Pöttering spoke of the openness of the EPP-ED to new parties, especially the Democratic Party (DP) and the Romanian Conservative Party (CP), which had just requested membership. In Bucharest, Mr Pöttering also met the president of the Romanian Parliament, Adrian Nastase, with whom he discussed the observer status at the European Parliament which Romanian MPs will obtain in due course.
Representatives of the Romanian government presented the European MPs with a an overview of the economic and social situation in Romania, calling attention in particular to the following: in 2004, the growth rate was 8.4%, the inflation rate 9.3% and the unemployment rate 6.2%; corruption: the government recently adopted a law on the declaration of property of civil servants, accumulated over the last 15 years. It has undertaken not to award contracts without going through a call for tender procedure and is looking into suspicious contracts signed by previous governments; decentralisation and administrative reform: the government is tackling problems of territorial cohesion and of the gulf which remains between rural areas and urban areas, and the worrying situation of extremely remote micro regions; taxation: recent reforms failed to resolve the issue of tax pressure, which is strangling SMEs even though they generate 70% of GDP, and whilst the underground economy represents a further 40% of the economy; property and restoration: the government committed several years ago to the process of returning all nationalised property, and those whose goods or property have disappeared will be compensated; infrastructure: the country is served by just 200 km of motorway, half of which dates from the communist era. Marian Milut, the chairman of the National Union of Romanian Employers (NURE) ended on a negative note, stating that "problems are only resolved on an administrative level (...). Most of what has been done exists only on paper".