One Year in the European Union - The Other Romania Project

Between January and February 2008, Asociaţia Pro Democraţia conducted national level research within the One Year in the European Union - The Other Romania project, supported by the European Commission. In 12 counties 538 interviews with persons employed in the three sectors most affected by the EU integration in the first year (local public servants, small and medium enterprises and farmers) have been conducted. The project aimed at comparatively assessing the extent to which different groups were affected by EU integration, their perception on the main threats and opportunities related to this process, and their main expectations from EU and Romanian institutions.

There is no doubt that, after the first year of EU integration, Romania’s joining the EU is perceived as a success by the groups most affected by the process. 87% consider that EU integration will foster mainly positive evolutions in Romania, while 79% of respondents have no unfulfilled expectations regarding EU institutions. The most important values associated with the European Union are democracy and economic growth, while social solidarity is considered as the least important value associated with the EU.

Nevertheless, different groups are perceived to beneficiate to different degrees from the EU integration. While public servants and local elected politicians are perceived as having the highest benefits, SMEs and farmers would get only limited advantages from the integration. While the first group will be the gatekeepers for EU funds access, SMEs and farmers will face a fierce competition in the future, while having doubts about their ability to access structural funds. Overall, the local civil servants are much better informed about the technicalities of EU integration, especially the acquis, and the rate of those that participated in writing projects for EU funds is more than triple compared with the other two groups (67% compared to 16% in the case of farmers and 22% in the case of SMEs).

Although the direct impact of EU integration is not very strong yet, more than 60% of the respondents consider that the costs of implementing the acquis related norms are large and very large, but that the EU funds represent a partial solution for covering these costs (76% of the local civil servants, 62% of farmers and 57% of SMEs personnel). The most important direct expectation regarding the EU integration, especially among civil servants, is related to a substantial increase of their salaries (close to those from the rich EU members). Nevertheless, as there is no direct relationship among these two processes, not fulfilling this expectation might generate an important frustration in the near future.

Todor Arpad, Asociatia Pro Democratia, Romania