ABSTRACT
The improvement now under way since the new government came to power suggests that Romania is on the way to meeting the political conditions laid down by the Copenhagen European Council.
(European Commission, 1997b: B.1.3)
Behind its conclusion were concerns over respect for the primacy of law and about fundamental rights, corruption, the working of the courts, individual liberties, the activities of the police and secret service, the situation of the Roma, and the protection of children in orphanages. Others had concerns too about the state of democracy in Romania. The mid-1990s saw various commentators questioning the progress made since 1989. One prominent critic described Romania as having only ‘a proto-democratic institutional framework’ and post-communist governments having ‘lingering authoritarian methods and mentalities’ (Tismaneanu, 1996: 6). Moreover, it was only due to the victory of opposition forces, a loose ‘coalition of coalitions’ (Shafir, 2001) operating as the Democratic Convention for Romania (CDR), that the Commission felt able to offer a positive, but guarded, assessment of the stability of Romania’s political institutions and conclude that recent measures to address the shortcomings mentioned were ‘a step in the right direction’.
