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The ancient historian Herodotus had some useful advice for the travellers and writers of his day: in order to understand a situation you must ask lots of people the same question. I have been following Herodotus’s advice for some years now by asking people I meet in Bucharest — taxi drivers, policemen, old ladies, shopkeepers – “Why are people allowed to park their cars on the pavements?” read more…

Adevarul made a sensational discovery last week – it found a copy of Romania’s post accession strategy. It made for depressing reading. By 2025, the strategy stated, Romania’s population would be decimated, the economy would be on its knees and the level of poverty would be sky high.

But this is not a strategy, at best it could be called an “analysis”. What the authors did was simply take current social and economic trends and project them into the future, coming up with their gloomy prognosis. It lacks the essentials of a strategy: a goal, a target, something to which the country (or at least the politicians) can strive towards; not to mention the public consultation and publicity that accompany similar strategies in normal countries. read more…