Alina Mungiu-Pippidi - Identity Crisis.rtf

http://www.tol.org/client/article/5176-identity-crisis.html?print TRANSITIONS ONLINE, No 4, 15 April 1998

Identity Crisis by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

When last December's Luxembourg summit relegated Romania to the European Union's waiting room, the local press reacted in two basic ways. Most papers took the official line, that the West had been gracious enough to invite everyone-prepared or not-to participate in the enlargement process, instead of including only the five first wave former communist countries plus Cyprus, as the European Commission had recommended a few months earlier. The other reaction, expressed by a whole range of nationalist, communist, and populist newspapers, declared the Luxembourg decision further proof of the West's rejection of Romania, citing Yalta and Malta as earlier precedents. They asserted that Romania was sold off to the Eastern sphere of influence, and that everything since-the 1,000 unaccounted deaths of the Romanian revolution, NATO's rejection, the indefinite postponement of EU entry, and the low rate of foreign investment-is a consequence of those agreements. Both of those views help to illustrate that Romanians, while striving for acceptance from a West they do not understand-and which in many ways does not understand them-suffers from an identity conflict that threatens to undermine any further chances at EU integration. For most Romanian intellectuals, who were kept from Western newspapers first by communism then by poverty, "Europe" is still the ideal of their parents and grandparents, who prayed Munich would bring peace in 1938 and then, in 1944, that Churchill would land in the Balkans. For this endangered species of humanists who survived the communist regime by translating Plato and Heidegger, the Europe of the Enlightenment means more than the Europe of the Eurocrats. Thus, their demand for inclusion is one made on behalf of the past. As the former Romanian dissident Alexandru Paleologu writes: "I would like to respectfully point out that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were Balkan. Byzantium was a millenary Balkan empire whose seed, kept in a few Irish convents during the Dark Ages, brought about the Carolinian Renaissance ... [and] which, in the first Christian centuries, educated a still-barbarian West." Since 1989, only one publisher, Adrian Marino, the most published Romanian author in the West, considered compiling a book of Romanian intellectuals writing on European integration. He admits that there were barely enough papers for even a slim volume. Because he planned to exclude communist authors, the selection became even slimmer. DEFINING 'ROMANIAN' During the campaign to join European structures, those opposed to integration, such as the extreme-nationalist Greater Romania Party and the Party of National Unity, which together hold about 6 percent of the seats in parliament, as well as the Romanian Orthodox Church put forth ideological stereotypes supporting their cause. A common one is that Romanian culture is unique, the only Latin-Orthodox European culture surrounded by a sea of hostile Slavs; however, the country's Orthodox ties keep it separate from the West. Another stereotype is that Western institutions do not suit Romania. For a brief 20-year period after World War I, there was a

democracy in the country-but Charles II abolished the constitution in 1938, and the experience was considered a failure. The influence of Romania's Orthodox Church has grown substantially since the November 1996 victory of the Christian Democrat-led coalition, the Democratic Convention of Romania. The church, as part of a religious revival after the defeat of Nicolae Ceausescu, has launched a battle against the West. Unlike EU member states, Romania has made Orthodox religious education compulsory in state schools. The church has repeatedly protested the interference of contemporary European customs and laws in Romania, such as the legalization of homosexuality. Because legalizing consensual homosexuality is one of the recommendations directed to Romania both by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, the issue fanned anti-European sentiment. The patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church asked members of parliament to vote in favor of punishing homosexuality. A fundamentalist Christian Orthodox foundation has gone so far as to warn that Romania could lose its religious identity if swallowed by a secular Western culture, arguing that Catholics have caused more losses to the Orthodox Church and culture than the Turks. Therefore, by orienting itself toward Islamic countries, Romania will find a place of its own, instead of being swallowed by NATO, the West's offensive vanguard. Those at the other end of the ideological spectrum argue in a rather ambiguous manner that Romania is and always has been a part of Europe. In various degrees, this view translates into an assumption that, culturally and historically, Europe has nothing to teach us, and Romania has the right to be accepted without further adjustment. Indeed, Europe wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for Romanians, who protected the "gates" of Europe from the barbarian Turks, and were repaid with Europe leaving them to stagnate. This view enhances pride in being "European" but transfers the culpability for Romania's underdevelopment-and eventual compliance with the communist regime--to the West, for having left the poor Eastern countries alone to face the infidel enemy. This is also a part of the current political discourse of all parties, with specific variations. It reached comic depths in 1993, when former president of the state Romanian Television Company Paul Everac said that because of "their ancestor," the Roman Emperor Trajan (circa A.D. 53-117), Romanians are not only a part of Europe, they are actually Europe's "ancestors." It turned into quite a subtle argument when philosopher and former dissident (now foreign minister) Andrei Plesu wrote: "Can we imagine an Asian people saying, 'We want to become integrated into Asia'?" However, the official view is that Romania is obviously an indissoluble part of Europe, but communism isolated the country and retarded progress. It is now time to catch up, and that cannot be done except through a joint effort by all people and political parties. Romania has to abide by the laws and regulations of Europe. The suffering it must endure is necessary to become part of the European club and enjoy its rewards. That view-considered the politically correct one-survived the November 1996 shift in political power, although it has never enjoyed much popular support. From the historic moment the Snagov statement was signed on 21 June 1995-when all political parties agreed for the first time on an integration strategy-this line has remained unaltered. Despite the fact that all parties agreed on this, their discourse continued to perpetuate the old stereotypes. The beginning of the statement is relevant for the rather abstract and ambiguous understanding of what Europe means today: The integration of Romania into the European Union is a strategic fundamental objective for

Romanian society. ...This choice is based on a consensus of political and social forces who want to implant the country deeply in the Western value system, to promote the national interest, to develop Romanian society on the fundamentals of democracy and market economy, which can provide stability and prosperity for the nation. In later versions of the document, the government refined the language. For the first time, they explained that European integration is primarily "economic," as compared to NATO expansion, which is more "political." Polls indicated tremendous support-95 percent and higher-for joining both the EU and NATO. But while NATO's usefulness is clear to everybody (security, the longawaited guarantee against a Russian attack), EU integration is still largely seen in symbolic terms. No public awareness campaign was ever undertaken as was done with NATO. Many Romanians, including politicians, remain confused by the EU issue. They understand it to mean only that some money would be redistributed from rich countries to poor ones; at the same time, integration is also tied to the idea that further sacrifices must still be made. Both President Emil Constantinescu and Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea harp on the need to complete economic reform in order to join the EU, but among ordinary people skepticism runs high, and with good reason. A March poll showed that while most people are extremely concerned with rising prices, unemployment and inflation, and-for the first time-with the need for a stable government, only about 5 percent consider European and even NATO integration a pressing need. Constantinescu declared his disappointment with the "Byzantine" Romanian political class and blamed internal hesitation and reform delays for arriving at the 12 March London EU meeting unprepared. The European Commission will reevaluate Romania in October, but if internal political squabbles continue delaying reform, there is little chance that Romania will score well. The challenge to the political class is how to solve simultaneously the problems of creating a market economy for a society in dire need of modernization; how to finance social protection of a European type while lacking any revenue; and how to deal with the inheritance of a substantial heavy industry, while half of the population is employed in some low-productivity agricultural occupation, which would be instantly ruined should Romania join the EU (see box, "The Association Effect"). Romania's identity conflict is the result of both internal and external pressures. The West must decide if stable and prosperous Balkans are better than the commonly shared Western prejudice against them, and it must invest more in the region. Romania and the EU must take further steps toward cooperation, or Romanian integration will remain a dream that could become a nightmare. As the Romanian minister in charge of European integration says, it would be like trying to marry a mouse to an elephant. He should know: he spent most of his adult life in Paris until the Ciorbea government imported him, apparently because it could find no one in Romania equipped to deal with integration. When he speaks Romanian on television with a heavy French accent, some newspapers imply he could be part of that future nightmare himself.

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi holds a doctorate in social psychology and is the author of Romanii dupa '89 (Romanians after 1989). She is the news and current affairs director of the Romanian Television Company.