New Danger for Ailing Romania

Romania’s elected leaders have not served their people well. The end of the brutal Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 was followed by years of corruption and mismanagement, no matter who was at the rudder. The country may make its worst choice yet if, in a presidential runoff next Sunday, it elects Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a nationalist with a record of anti-Hungarian, anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy rhetoric. Neither Tudor nor his xenophobic Greater Romania Party deserves a place in today’s Europe, much less in the 15-nation European Union. The EU should make it clear it will not negotiate Romania’s accession if Tudor becomes president or a partner in a coalition government.

More than a decade after communism’s fall in Europe, Romania still stands on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. The living standard for most of the 23 million Romanians has steadily declined, and the currency is worthless. The Communist bureaucrats simply turned to corruption and looted state enterprises.

The Romanians initially elected warmed-over Communists and, when they failed, handed the reins to an inexperienced university professor, Emil Constantinescu, who proved unable to hold a center-right coalition together. Romanians are now faced with the unenviable choice of Ion Iliescu, an ex-Communist, or Tudor, a racist.

Tudor’s railings against minorities and his plans to recentralize the economy and retrieve lost territory in adjacent Moldova and Bessarabia resonate with a large segment of voters. His territorial threats may be empty but they are stoking old animosities in a region with deep ethnic fault lines.

Earlier this year, the EU imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria to protest the entry of Joerg Haider’s nationalist Freedom Party into a coalition government. The EU governments should take the same tough stand against Romania, one of 12 former Communist countries seeking EU membership. Though Romanians are free to elect their leaders, a choice of Tudor should disqualify the country from joining the European Union.