[EN] Grave and unpleasant readings / [RO] Lecturi grave şi neplăcute (9)

[EN] After the Great Depression (1929-1933), the world would never be the same – in less than a decade, World War Two (WWII) erupted. [RO] După Marea Depresiune (1929 -1933), lumea nu avea să mai fie niciodată aceeaşi – în mai puţin de o decadă, a izbucnit Al Doilea Război Mondial (WWII).

[EN] A wacky parallel, some would say… Still, since 2008 (= 1929?!) most certitudes of our civilisation have been steadily faltering… [RO] O paralelă nebunească ar spune unii… Totuşi, din 2008 (= 1929?!) cele mai multe dintre certitudinile civilizaţiei noastre au început constant să se clatine…

[EN] No economic model seems workable anymore, and the flag bearers of civilisation (the USA & the EU) are frail and unable to lead the world towards the once promised ‘prosperous future’. [RO] Niciun model economic nu mai pare funcţional, iar port-drapelele civilizaţiei (SUA şi UE) sunt fragile şi incapabile să conducă lumea către ‘viitorul prosper’ promis cândva.

[EN] China is a strong country which may even grew stronger, but not a role model; it’s a giant with feet of clay, vulnerable to global economic turmoil and plagued by huge social disparities. [RO] China este o ţară puternică ce ar putea deveni şi mai puternică, dar nu un model de urmat; este un gigant cu picioare de lut, vulnerabil la turbulenţe economice globale şi afectat de disparităţi sociale uriaşe.

[EN] Even countries apparently spared from direct hits of the global crisis (albeit not of other structural problems) faced tough warnings… [RO] Chiar ţări aparent ferite de lovituri directe ale crizei globale (deşi nu de alte probleme structurale) au primit avertismente dure…

[EN] …severe forest fires (Russia), devastating floods (Australia), a large earthquake + tsunami (Japan) or a ‘beheading of leadership’ (Poland). [RO] …severe incendii de pădure (Rusia), inundaţii devastatoare, un mare cutremur + tsunami (Japonia) sau o ‘decapitare a conducerii’ (Polonia).

[EN] Like in the 1930s, countries began to slide, one by one, into internal chaos or fall under the boots of occupying forces… Ethiopia (1935), Spain (1936), China (1937), Austria (1938), Czechoslovakia (1939). [RO] Precum în anii `30, ţările au început să alunece, una câte una, în haos intern sau să cadă sub cizmele forţelor de ocupaţie... Etiopia (1935), Spania (1936), China (1937), Austria (1938), Cehoslovacia (1939).

[EN] Back to our days: Greek 1st bail out (May 2010), Irish bail out (November 2010), Portuguese bail out (May 2011), and… the 2nd Greek bail out (September 2011?!). [RO] Înapoi în zilele noastre: primul împrumut pentru Grecia (mai 2010), împrumutul irlandez (noiembrie 2010), împrumutul portughez (mai 2011) şi… al doilea împrumut pentru Grecia (septembrie 2011?!).

[EN] Irrespective of some sighs of relief, the attempt to cure Greek debt crisis with more indebtedness is no solution; it’s total madness. [RO] Indiferent de unele oftaturi de uşurare, încercarea de vindecare a crizei datoriei greceşti cu mai multă îndatorare nu este o soluţie; este nebunie totală.

[EN] Greeks would never be able to repay their huge debt (some 350 billion euros), even if all of them were sold into slavery. [RO] Grecii nu vor fi niciodată capabili să îşi restituie uriaşa datorie (circa 350 miliarde euro), chiar dacă toţi ar fi vânduţi ca sclavi.

[EN] Therefore, all these ‘emergency solutions’ (bail outs) only buy time – but will today’s leaders know what to to with the little time thus gained?! [RO] Aşadar, toate aceste ‘soluţii de urgenţă’ (împrumuturi) doar cumpără timp – dar vor şti liderii de azi ce să facă cu puţinul timp astfel câştigat?!

[EN] Cures tried so far only led to pitting Germans against Greeks, debtors against creditors, the ‘lazy (?!) PIIGS’ against ‘hard working (?!) Europeans’, sovereign states against eurocrats, and Greeks against everyone… [RO] Leacurile încercate au dus doar la a-i strâni pe germani împotriva grecilor, pe debitori împotriva creditorilor, pe ‘leneşii (?!) PIIGS’ contra ‘harnicilor (?!) europeni’, pe statele suverane contra eurocraţilor, iar pe greci împotriva tuturor...

[EN] Be them socially and politically painful, aren’t there any viable solutions? What can save Greece? Is the EMU living its final years? [RO] Fie ele dureroase social şi politic, nu există soluţii viabile? Ce poate salva Grecia? Îşi trăieşte EMU ultimii ani?

[EN] Tragically, instead of welding the ‘european dream’, the common currency appears very close to shattering the EU. If the euro were unsavable, could the EU be still preserved? [RO] În mod tragic, în loc să sudeze ‘visul european’, moneda unică pare foarte aproape de a sfărâma UE. Dacă euro ar fi de nesalvat, ar putea fi  UE încă salvată?

[EN] How would a post-EMU or post-EU Europe look like? I’d say that such a ‘new Europe’ would be as frightening as the ‘old Europe’ of the 1930s. [RO] Cum va arăta o Europă post-EMU sau post-UE? Aş zice că o astfel de ‘nouă Europă’ ar fi la fel de înfricoşătoare ca ‘vechea Europă’ a anilor `30.

[EN] The proposed readings: / [RO] Lecturile propuse:

[EN] 1) As a scary memento, some extraordinary pictures from the decade before WWII, and from the first months of WWII.

[RO] 2) Ca un memento înfricoşător, nişte imagini extraordinare din decada de dinainte de WWII şi din primele luni ale WWII.

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[EN] 3) Effects of the Greek debt crisis upon the euro (+ here, here, here, here) and how they can lead to the break-up the Eurozone (+ here, here, here). 

[RO] 4) Efectele crizei datoriilor greceşti asupra euro (+ aici, aici, aici) şi cum pot duce la spargerea Eurozonei (+ aici, aici, aici).

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[EN] 5) About how imminent a Greek default is (+ here, here) and how Greece is losing sovereignty (+ here, here)

[RO] 6) Despre cât de iminent este un faliment grecesc (+ aici, aici) şi cum Grecia îşi pierde suveranitatea (+ aici, aici).
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[EN] 7) How indebted are EU countries (+ here) and what (or who) is next (+ here) after Greece?

[RO] 8) Cât de îndatorate sunt ţările UE (+ aici) şi ce (sau cine) urmează (+ aici) după Grecia?

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[EN] 9) Why monetary unions fail (+ here).

[RO] 10) De ce eşuează uniunile monetare (+ aici).
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[EN] 11) How true are the ‘laziness & inefficiency’ of the Greeks (as media campaigns pretend) or are there systemic flaws of the Eurosystem?
[RO] 12) Cât sunt de adevărate ‘Lenea şi ineficienţa’ grecilor (după cum pretind campanii media) sau există defecte sistemice ale Eurosistemului?

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (18) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

It’s been over a year since the most tangible (and some of the most cherished I assume) European Integration project, the Euro, started to look threatened.

Half a year after the Greek bailout (May 2010) came the Irish bailout (November 2010), and another half a year later came the Portuguese bailout (May 2011). What will happen in the next six months?

The Eurozone appears to have run out of ‘weak links’ whose default and even exclusion from the EMU would not be altogether catastrophic but somewhat bearable.

There are now fears of a next (bigger, biggest?!) global financial crisis. And it could well start with the solvency problems of the weakest euro-giants: Spain and Italy.

To some, the question is when the EMU will eventually prove to be an utter failure. To others, what thay are speculating about is how this imminent break-up would be possible, and to what degree.

Will it be a complete return to the the 1990s, with all euro-countries turning back to their national currencies? Or will it rather be a contraction of the Eurozone, scaled back to a core of the most efficient economies that make it up today?

Finally, there are the others – equally narrow-minded as those who rejoyce what they think is the demise of the EMU, because of its insolvent members.

They are the fanatics who insist that “there is no plan B,” therefore the current monetary union ought to survive ‘no matter what’. That is no matter what misery could bring to some countries that should have been part of the EMU in the first place.

There’s no reason to be happy about the prospect of seeing the Euro scrapped as a failed historic experiment, while are also no sane reasons to hold on to the ‘no matter what’ position.

Both the consenquences of giving up the Euro and of trying to preserve the Eurozone as it is today appear to be nothing but disatrous.

Europe and the EU will have to change, irrespective of what happens to the common currency now used in 18 EU states (+ colonies and some non-EU countries).

The turmoil within the EMU spares no country of ripple effects, and – to a certain extent – the fate of the entire ‘civilised world’ as we know it today depends on the ‘fate of the Eurozone’.

Countries like the UK, with it’s GBP, will have slightly more freedom of maneuver, unlike the Euro-slaves tied to decisions taken in Brussels and Frankfurt. However, not even China, Russia, Japan, nor the USA will be spared of what is due to happen on the Old Continent.

The Age of Discovery, two World Wars, problems in the Middle East (and in other former European colonies), almost every ‘world event’ had and has to do with Europe. And now – with the Euro.

Before anything else, one big question should be: what will happen to Germany? How will this great nation cope with the break-up of the EMU, assuming that a ‘reduced Eurozone’ (to 10-12 countries, instead of 17) wouldn’t be such a cataclysm?

It’s worth rasing this question, because here’s another ‘witty bit’ that I learned in the UK, from a British economic analyst (married to a German woman :-).

Considering that “For the past 400 years, all wars in Europe were fought because of German rise to supremacy on the continent,” he described the Eurozone as being “the best way to deal with German hegemony.”

What will we Europeans do if this ‘best way’ will no longer be to hand? Will we have to return to the old ‘worst ways’ in dealing with the strongest nations on the continent?

It’s very likely that those who were not good at playing by the EMU rules won’t be good at ‘alternative ways’ for keeping the statu quo in Europe either :-(

What if all these that we take for granted now – six decades of peace, freedom of movement, European cooperation – were taken away from us? Without all these, even a silly ‘cucumber war’ could lead to a Third World War, couldn’t it?

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

My 8th trip to EU’s Mecca (Brussels) [A 8-a mea călătorie la Mecca UE (Bruxelles)]

My 8th trip to EU’s Mecca (Belgium’s capital, Brussels) – the previous 7 taking place in Jan 2005, Feb 2006, Jun 2006 x 2, Oct 2007, Mar 2008 & May 2008 – started yesterday, as a continuation of my study visit to Rome.

After I was given a tremendous opportunity to get some firsthand insights about the challenges facing immigrants in Italy, as well as how some Romanian citizens live there, I am due to share my experience at this conference.

Not because I am one of the speakers, I honestly hope that this one day conference will be the most interesting EU related event that I have ever taken part in since my Chevening Fellowship at the SEI. It’s not the usual (to some) ‘EU blah-blah-blah’.

It is supposed to be an open discussion about how the free right of movement within the EU is respected, and about the countless problems that occur when people are moving from one Member State to another.

Apart from being a delicate political issue, the freedom of movement has to do with European Political Economy, and the extent to which this freedom is really ‘free’ can show us how ‘integrated’ the 27 Member States are.

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Whether we are eurosceptics or europhorics, I find very hard for anyone to deny the fact that, apart from the EMU, the four fundamental freedoms of the Internal Market are (or should be) the most palpable results of European Integration.
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Among them, the free movement of people is of utmost importance; without it, moving around goods, services and capital would be meaningless. The EU Treaties were written for people not for things, weren’t they?

I know that I am an uncomfortable character (in writing, not in real life I hope :-), and that there are people who may disapprove of several eurosceptical views of mine, as well as despise the fact that I am ‘at war’ with some humanist values promoted in the EU.

On the other hand, others could accuse me of being a ‘EU propagandist’, as long as I am giving speeches on EU topics, and I have been granted some professional opportunities paid by the European Commission (out of ‘EU money’) for the past years.

Well, let my critics say what they please! I believe that there are many necessary good things we could do together, as Europeans. The alternative would be turning Europe back in time, to the first half of the 20th century!

Equally, I think that there are domains that the EU should not interfere with, and I’d like to see many corrections of European policies.

But I don’t believe in anything ever improving by itself. Nor that we could stop the things we don’t like about the EU simply by throwing stones at them. The only chance of seeing our desirable changes taking shape is taking part in the EU.

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[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Two years have passed… [Au trecut doi ani…]

…since the great spring we spent together as Chevening Fellows, learning about European Political Economy in one of the most beautiful places where one could be in this time of the year – East Sussex.

And one year has gone since the Alumni Conference of 2009. Are the predictions made then (shown in the fourth picture) still available? Are there many bad news on the way?

Waiting for good news, I’m using this blog post to greet everyone of my ‘fellow Fellows’ + the lovely hosts from the SEI…

…and ask you “how are you coping with the crisis?” – a time of turmoil which appears to be far from a happy ending :-(

Unlike the Fellows of 2009 & 2010, those of us from 2008 (I don’t know about the ones before us) faced no real winter.

I was absolutely amazed with the lovely British weather about which I had heard so many nasty things. I loved it :-)

Sadly, the current global recession threw the entire world into some kind of perpetual winter, and – at least according to British newspapers – many things may not be as pleasant in the UK as we left them.

If anyone has the time, I’d like to know what you are doing, using this opportunity to thank you all for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, hoping we shall meet again someday!

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (2) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

Q: How is Eastern Europe seen from London? – we were all curious to find throughout our first study visit to London, therefore we asked this question, in various forms, to different people we had the chance to speak to.

A: “The sad fact is that nobody thinks about how Eastern Europe is like” - this is one of the frankest assessments about how our part of the world is seen from London. It belongs to a very bright and beautiful (at least in the view of a Polish colleague who likes German women :-) young researcher, and maybe it's good that we received it just before meeting (in the next weeks) politicians who may attempt to fool us with speeches about how important the New Europe is for them.

However, at least one of the assumptions I had made before arriving here seems to be correct. Indeed, most of the entrepreneurs in UK not only acknowledge the benefit brought by the UK membership of the EU to their businesses, but they are also very well informed about how things are going in Europe.

At least partly, this is due to the activity of people (probably not older than us, the 12 Chevening Fellows hosted by SEI in 2008), working for independent organizations such as the Centre for European Reform or the Business for New Europe group.

On the other hand, we are being confirmed that the general awareness of the EU among the British public is quite low, comparable maybe to that in Romania. Romanians are no better, nor worse than the Brits at knowledge about the EU...

It only happens that, while for the Brits the EU is a constant source of irrational fear (some imagining that a European Constitutional Treaty would mean that the Queen will no longer be the Head of State :-), many Romanians held for a long time an overoptimistic expectation of the EU, viewed as a doctor that would somehow miraculously cure the ills that they didn't cure themselves.

No wonder that Winston Churchill once said that "the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (1) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

I guess it's high time I started a series of blog posts exclusively in English about what I am learning here, hoping that both my colleagues, and our lovely SEI hosts would enjoy reading them. Obviously, it would be pointless to reproduce here lecture notes.

Moreover (to be completely honest to everyone :-), even if I learned by heart all the theories that we're being familiarized with these days, I'll probably forget them sooner or later. But I'll definitely not forget quite a few memorable phrases or ideas.

For the beginning, here's why (put in a nutshell) Communism and planned economy were doomed to fail. As they applied 20th century technologies to a 19th century economy (whose main assets were the hordes of cheap, unskilled labourers), those governments increased productivity up to a point, and even launched the first satellite (1957).

Only that in 20 years from then, much of the technology used to take Yuri Gagarin into space would be available in toy stores, and the Communist regimes simply couldn't make that essential swift from the age of electro-mechanics to the age of electronics.

Basically, many industrial secrets that Soviet spies were stealing from the West remained locked in archives. Information was useless in the absence of people trained to know what to do with it!

An infinity of other (political, economical, social, moral, and so forth) reasons would explain the collapse of Communism, but to put it simply - even to those born after 1989-1991 - here is a brilliant (and unacademic :-) explanation from our Course Director.

His words seem to be as carefully distilled as Scotch whisky: "You find it hard to believe that a Soviet planner could come up with the idea of an iPod." It really is as simple as that...

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Îndrăgostit de SUA, învăţând despre UE [In love with the USA, learning about the EU]

“Unless you make it easier to sack people, you won't make it easier to hire people” (Jim Rollo, Co-Director of Sussex European Institute) - agăţat de această primă idee care ar putea explica de ce Marea Britanie şi, mai ales, economia ei sunt atât de altfel faţă de restul UE, iată că mă arunc şi eu – până acum doar un observator şi critic al blogosferei – în această mare turbată precum Marea Mânecii...

...mai multe n-ar fi de zis în a patra mea zi pe tărâm britanic, unde deja mă simt acasă din primele 24 de ore.

Nu ştiu ce va ieşi până la urmă din acest MunteanUK (thanks for the cool brand Mr G!), dar parcă n-aş putea să nu tot scriu despre ceea “văd enorm şi simt monstruos” (doar meseria mea e scrisul)...

...într-o ţară care se încăpăţânează să nu semene mai deloc cu România, dar nici cu sora noastră mai mare Franţa, nici cu celelalte surori latine Portugalia şi Spania, ba încă nici cu SUA.

Aşadar, iată mărturia mea din timpul a ceea ce vor fi, cu voia Domnului, 12 săptămâni petrecute în campusul Universităţii din Sussex, studiind European Political Economy, la Sussex European Institute, ca Chevening Fellow.

Foarte pe scurt, aceasta nu înseamnă altceva decât a fi un privilegiat invitat al Foreign and Commonwealth Office, alături de alţi 11 colegi din Croaţia, Estonia, Letonia, Macedonia, Polonia, Slovacia, Ungaria şi Turcia.

[Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la/For all the posts on this blog go to: Contents/Cuprins]