FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

ROMANIA: How Bleak Is My Valley

Feb 7
IPS

Petrosani, a town of about 50,000, presents a stark picture today of what the abrupt replacement of state socialism by unbridled capitalism can do.

The Romanian government recently announced that 4,000 more mining jobs would be cut in Jiu Valley between 2007 and 2020 as a wrap-up to a process of restructuring begun in the mid-1990s, in which more than three-quarters of the coalmines in the area were deemed unprofitable and closed down.

Between 2004 and 2006, roughly 30,000 people were fired. [..] "Some of the mines that were closed down would have needed just some limited investment in order to function properly," said Iacob, a former electrician at the mines.

But the radical restructuring agreements signed between the Romanian government, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in 1997 paid little attention to such details. After the "revolution" in 1989, all post-socialist governments, regardless of their political orientation, adopted a Western-engineered path of reforms. [..]

Workers from many industries lost their jobs as a result of the restructuring of the economy, but few today get as little sympathy as the miners from Jiu Valley.

Miners are commonly resented for their role in the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in the early 1990s. Sold out by their own union leaders, they were manipulated by then president Ion Iliescu, who brought them to Bucharest to put down public protests.

"Let them rot in Petrosani now," said Manuela, a student at the University of Bucharest. "When they came to Bucharest in 1990 to beat up the students, they thought they would have power forever. They deserve what they get."

What the miners from Petrosani get is poverty [..]. Formerly a prosperous town of miners, Petrosani is today a ghost town. There is no productive activity other than mining, and workers who lost their jobs could find no other.

"I was 17 when they closed the mine, I had only started working there a year before," said Lucian, a 24-year old construction worker from Petrosani. "I understood quickly I would have no chance unless I try to go somewhere abroad." Many young people left Petrosani through the 1990s.

What they left behind is little to speak of. [N]eighbours chat in the parks, without a workplace to rush to. There is little money to spend, and as a consequence, no entertainment industry either. Petrosani is a grey town, dominated by decrepit socialist architecture.

Many families live in extreme poverty. In one area called the 'colony', local people live in apartments without water, electricity or heating. And for lack of funds for repairs, sometimes without windows or walls. [..]

The labour structure made the population highly vulnerable to any alterations in the coal production system. But changes were not expected in communist Romania, which gradually became a closed economy, relying heavily on exploitation of domestic mineral resources for development.

In 1989, however, the revolution against communism came, and the neat balance of the centrally planned system collapsed. The most difficult task, to which there is still no solution, has been to relocate people from industries that were closed down to other areas of activity.

Ex-miners have sometimes refused to accept the alternatives on offer. Once from one of the wealthiest sectors of the economy, the miners have been reluctant to settle for low wages in other domains.

Many miners in Petrosani enrolled in the voluntary redundancy scheme set up by the government in 1997, which allowed them to receive a severance package of 12-20 months' wages. Some managed to use this money to set up business.

The rest began to feel cheated once this money was gone. [..] Most people in Petrosani are left today with no hope. Only the young still find reasons to be optimistic.

Lucian is committed to staying in Petrosani with his pregnant wife. But he told IPS he can lead a decent life only because he has been working abroad in Spain and Italy, and has learnt how to build houses.

"The houses are not for people from Petrosani," he laughed. "They are for businessmen from Bucharest who want to spend their holidays in comfortable villas in the beautiful mountains around our Jiu Valley."

Moldova: An EU Invasion Waiting To Happen

February 1, 2007
RFE/RL

Hundreds of thousands of Moldovan citizens have sent letters of application for Romanian citizenship, raising concerns that a flood of Moldovan workers will use Romanian passports to enter the workforce of the European Union.

With Romania's entry into the EU, the potential for people from Europe's poorest country to gain a backdoor entrance into Western labor markets has become a major concern for EU policymakers.

Newspapers in Britain were the first to warn of a "Moldovan invasion" caused by Romania's citizenship policies, which allow many Moldovans to claim Romanian passports. At least four major [..] dailies featured articles warning that hundreds of thousands of Moldovans, "without money or prospects," may be headed toward the European Union.

530,000 New Romanians?

The [..] headlines were sparked by a BBC report in October 2006 citing a statement from Romania's vice-consul in Chisinau, Lucian Stanica.

Stanica said that during the months of August and September, the Romanian consulate received 300,000 citizenship requests from Moldova.

Since Romania's accession into the EU on January 1, 2007, this number has climbed even higher.

In a speech in Chisinau on January 16, Romanian President Traian Basescu said there were nearly twice as many applications pending for citizenship from Moldova.

"There are still 530,000 people waiting to hand in their citizenship requests. And out of those which have already been handed in to the Romanian Embassy in Chisinau, the majority concern at least two people -- if not three or even four," Basescu said. "By our evaluation, this means that there are, realistically speaking, around 700,000 or 800,000 requests for Romanian citizenship."

Concerns about mass Moldovan migration into the EU have been further inflamed by the large number of Moldovans already working abroad.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that a quarter of Moldova's economically active population works outside of the country. [..]

Indeed, a survey conducted in 2006 by the IMAS-INC Chisinau polling agency revealed that 48 percent of Moldovans would get a Romanian passport if they could, and 85 percent of those people said they would use the passport to work in the EU.

Red Tape, Long Lines

[..] Romania defines citizenship based on nationality rather than residence. Citizens of Moldova who can demonstrate that either they, their parents, or their grandparents lived in Moldova when it was a part of Romania before the end of World War II are eligible for dual citizenship.

The process for acquiring citizenship, however, was substantially changed in 2003.

The new laws require that Moldovans undergo a long bureaucratic process before dual citizenship is granted.

The letters of request, which the British reports cited, are only the first step in the process. Of all the letters received since 2003, only 30,000 went to the second step of submitting a file. Of these, only 3,000 people were granted citizenship.

Monica Macovei, of the Romanian Ministry of Justice, told the BBC in an October interview that, since citizenship laws have not been relaxed since 2003, it is highly unlikely that the number of requests granted will increase significantly.

Closing the Border

[..] Meanwhile, For many Moldovans, travel to Romania is a regular part of life. They attend school, work, and regularly travel to Romania for vacation or to visit family. [But now,] regular Moldovans are having to cope with the sudden closing of their western border.

[..] For example, an important part of the central market in the Romanian city of Botosani, has traditionally been made up of Moldovans selling various goods, particularly food, for less than the price of department stores.

For them, and for the Romanians who do business with them, the new visa restrictions are a significant hardship.

In addition, both the extent of the visa restrictions and Romania's lack of preparation for the new policy have caught many Moldovans by surprise.

Despite assurances by Basescu that Romania's entrance into the EU would not inhibit the free flow of Moldovans across the border, the consulate in Chisinau has been overwhelmed by visa requests.

Operating At Capacity

Romania has added new staff and facilities in an effort to help ease the procedure. In addition to expanding its operations in Chisinau, Romania is opening new consulates in the Moldovan cities of Cahul and Balti. More than 40 staff from Romania's foreign and interior ministries are currently employed in the business of handling Moldova's citizenship and visa requests.

But even with the addition of new staff, including workers for night and weekend shifts, the number of Moldovans visiting Romania dropped threefold in early 2007 compared to the same time in 2006.

Prior to January 1, there was confusion [..] about how border regulations would be implemented.

In one anecdote, a security shift supervisor from Chisinau reportedly found himself in a very difficult situation while returning to Moldova through Romania. He drove to Bucharest with his wife and child, in order to fly to Italy for the New Year. They, like many other Moldovans, prefer flying from Romania, because discount carriers make it less expensive than flying from Chisinau.

Before leaving, the Romanian consulate assured him that he could return to Moldova via Bucharest without a visa. When he and his family returned to Bucharest, however, they were told that a new law, passed on January 2, required that they have a Romanian visa.

They were told to return to Italy and apply for a visa -- a process which would have required a four-day stay and would have cost them at least $1,000 in airline tickets and hotels. Only the last-minute intervention of the Moldovan Ministry of Foreign Affairs prevented them from being forcefully put on a plane back to Italy.

The Dilemma

While some in the EU worry about immigration from Moldova, others raise concerns that restricting the border may produce even more economic migrants. Recognizing this dilemma, international donors have pledged $1.2 billion in aid for Moldova over the next three years.

This is not just an issue for the EU. The outflow of Moldova's workforce is one of the main obstacles to the country's social and economic development.

Not only does emigration drain Moldova's workforce, but between 150,000 to 270,000 of Moldova's children are being raised without a mother or father, and around 40,000 are separated from both. Until citizens are able to earn a living wage in Moldova, however, the attraction of emigration is unlikely to abate.

You sure? Moldova has a Gagauzian minority.. those are Muslim..

According to the 2004 census, the population of Moldova has the following religious composition:

* Eastern Orthodox Christians 3,158,015 or 95.5%
* Roman Catholics 4,645 or 0.14%
* Old-Rite Christians (traditionally Orthodox Lippovans) 5,094 or 0.15%
* Traditional Protestant 0.19%
o Confessional Evangelicals 1,429 or 0.04%
o Refomed 1,190 or 0.035%
o Evangelical Synod-Presbyterians 3,596 or 0.11%
* Newer Protestant faiths 1.83%
o Baptists 32,754 or 0.99%
o Seven-day Advemntists 13,503 or 0.41%
o Pentecostal 9,179 or 0.28%
o Brethren Assemblies (locally Creştini după Evanghelie) 5,075 or 0.15%
* Muslims 1,667 or 0.05%
* Other religions 25,527 or 0.77%
* Atheists 12,724 or 0.38%
* Agnostics 33,207 or 1%

US urges EU not to 'go soft' on Belarus
EU Observer
2007-02-08

The US has urged the EU not to "go soft" on Belarus after president Lukashenko fell out with Russia and turned to the EU for help. "We should not throw a lifeline to this regime," deputy assistant secretary of state Kramer told EU officials, who already launched expert-level talks with Belarus colleagues on energy and immigration. But Belarus' opposition leader Milinkevich also wrote to Lukashenko urging "cooperation". Other activists feel he should face justice over disappeared persons instead.

Portugal will legalise abortion
BBC News
2007-02-12

Portuguese PM Socrates has said abortion will be legalised despite the turnout for a referendum being too low to be legally binding.

Turnout was about 40%, less than the 50% required. But of those who did vote, 59% backed a change to the law that would allow abortions until the 10th week of pregnancy.

Currently abortions are only allowed in cases of rape, a health threat to the mother or serious foetal abnormality.

Minority report

There are 785 MEPs in the European parliament. Of which only nine are non-white. Why is no one up in arms about it? Patrick Barkham reports from Brussels

Wednesday February 14, 2007
The Guardian

It is not Livia Jaroka's youth or talent that mark her out in the beige corridors of the European parliament, but her skin. Jaroka, a centre-right MEP for Hungary, was nominated for a parliamentary award for her conscientious work last year. The response? A Bulgarian objected, arguing that she did not deserve it. "In my country, there are tens of thousands of Gypsy girls way more beautiful," Dimitar Stoyanov wrote in an email to MEPs. "In fact, if you're in the right place at the right time you even can buy one (around 12-13 years old) to be your loving wife. The best of them are very expensive - up to €5,000 a piece, wow!"

Read on..

EU lawmakers divided over draft Kosovo report
Southeast European Times
2007-02-20

A draft European Parliament report on Kosovo's future is expected to spark a debate because it mentions the word "independence".

Many EU lawmakers are opposed to the EP going a step further than what UN special envoy Ahtisaari has prescribed in his Kosovo proposal. But the report argues that independence is "the only sustainable settlement".

Author Joost Lagendijk (from the legislature's Group of the Greens) says the only difference between his report and Ahtisaari's proposal is that the UN envoy "does not call it independence and I do."

Flemish couples don't want to be wed by Wouter

Alex Duval Smith, Europe correspondent
Sunday February 25, 2007
The Observer


Wouter Van Bellingen has a good Flemish name. He is a former patrol leader in the Boy Scouts. He is an elected official of a party that wants more autonomy for Flanders. And he is a Belgian black.
Now, three couples in the town of Sint Niklaas - whose patron saint is Santa Claus - have judged their registrar by his skin and cancelled their weddings. 'I am not really surprised. I'm used to having more space on the train than my fellow passengers,' said van Bellingen, a 34-year-old father of two. However, the town's Socialist mayor, former minister Freddy Willockx, said that he was shocked by the racism that was being shown by the people of Flanders. 'I had found the image of a black man officiating at a white wedding rather beautiful,' he mused.

But while the Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has expressed his indignation at the situation, the country's racial equality commission has been caught on the hop. 'We are more used to cases where someone seeking services has been discriminated against. Legally there is not much we can do,' said Jozef de Witte, the director of the Centre pour l'Egalité des Chances. Van Bellingen knows just what the racist couples can do: 'They have three choices - to accept me as their registrar, to stay single, or to move. I have been elected for six years.'
The registrar began his job at the town hall of St Niklaas, to the west of Antwerp, on 1 January - two months after topping the list in local elections of Spirit, a left-inclined nationalist party whose coalition with the Socialist Party scored 35 per cent of the vote. Vlaams Belang, the right-wing nationalists who want Flanders to break away from Belgium, won 26 per cent of the vote in the town, which has a population of 70,000.

'I was in all the papers because I had become the first black alderman in Belgium,' said Van Bellingen, who was born in Antwerp to Rwandan parents and grew up in St Niklaas with an adoptive white family. His three brothers and sisters were half-Indian, half-African and white.

Mayor Willockx, 60, said that he had only learnt of the cancellations from town hall staff after the event. 'In Belgium, couples wishing to be married can pencil in a date at their town hall up to six months before the ceremony,' he said. 'The place of marriage is determined by the bride's home address. It seems that the three couples had been pencilled in. The cancellations happened independently of one another but in each case the couples or their parents were clear about their reason; they didn't want a black man officiating.

'The director of administration came to me in confidence to find out how he should handle future cancellations, especially since one set of parents had been abusive. If it happens again, I want to talk to the people, but there is nothing that we can do to trace those who have already cancelled their pencilling-in.'

He has received more than 2,000 emails and letters since the cancellations became public knowledge three weeks ago. 'Only about 10 have been racist or critical of the council's support for the registrar,' the mayor said. 'This is not a racist town. We have a refugee centre right in the middle of town and we have never had any problems.'

Van Bellingen, who has married 25 couples since the beginning of the year, views the whole experience as enriching. 'The African in me - who always likes to see the positive side of life - feels happy about what has happened,' he said. 'I hope that the three couples change their minds. If they do, I shall happily marry them and thank them for bringing about a debate. The issue of race is too often hushed up because people feel ill at ease with it. My books are now full until August and the people I marry all want me in their wedding photograph. The people of St Niklaas are so proud of their black registrar.'

As a result of the marriage controversy, local members of Belgian human rights groups have organised a symbolic mass wedding on the market square of St Niklaas to take place on 21 March, which is World Anti-Racism Day.

'It's going to be such fun,' said Van Bellingen. 'We have 200 couples so far and we're going to have the most crowded wedding photo ever, the biggest wedding dance ever and the most multicultural buffet imaginable.'

And I am grateful to you for that.