Today, Romania is a full democracy and a member of the European Union as well as NATO. It has hosted some NATO Summits. Notably, at the Bucharest NATO Summit in 2008, the decision was taken to invite Ukraine to join the alliance one day. NATO flags are often displayed in Romania, whereas they never are in Western Europe.
Romania has a close relationship with the United States and has hosted several U.S. presidents. Even in the communist era, two American presidents visited the country: Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Although Romania was communist, it stated its neutrality in the Cold War.
Romania’s GDP per capita is almost the European average. The country has benefited from the largesse of the European Union. The country’s roads and railways are finally coming up to the normal standard for Europe.
The Roman Empire conquered this south-east European country in ancient times. That is why the name of the Romanian nation is derived from Rome. Their language is Latin-based. But these days, 50% of Romanians speak English as well as Romanian. Amongst younger people and people in the capital city of Bucharest, it is usually fluent in English.
Romania is an attractive place to live, with a low cost of living and low crime. It has the advantage of being an EU country. There are beaches on the Black Sea, and there are ski resorts.
Since Romania acceded to the EU in 2007, millions of Romanians have shifted to the more affluent member states of the European Union. Italy is the most popular option for Romanians because it is not far away, and the language, being Latin-based, is very easy for Romanians to learn. Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece, the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic all have significant Romanian communities. Before 2007, a lot of Romanians moved to the USA and Canada. Romanians who have made money in the West often send it back.
The European Union has 80% approval in Romania, with only 10% of people against. Even the ultra-nationalist party accepts EU membership. The EU gave Romanians the opportunity to travel that they never had before.
Emigration is a mixed blessing for Romania. The country has got much, much richer. There is now very low unemployment in Romania. But the population has fallen from a peak of 23 million in the 1990s to 18 million today, and the population is continuing to go down. People in their 20s tend to move abroad. They have children in their 30s, and these Romanian children were born in other countries.
Romania is becoming a country of elderly people. The fertility rate is 1.7, but a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed for a stable population. Romanians are rightly worried because, at this rate, Romania as a country will die out in a few hundred years. There will be Romanians, but none of them will be resident in their homeland.
In the 1980s, Romania lagged 50 years behind the standard of living in Western European countries like France, the Netherlands and the UK. Now it is probably 20 years behind, and it is catching up.
There is a tiny Indian community in Romania. They are 0.1% of the population. In the communist era, Romania forged cordial contacts with the Afro-Asian Bloc. The Romanian Communist Government said it was dead against colonialism and neo-colonialism. This played well in India.
Bucharest is now 1% ethnically Chinese. They are heavily concentrated in the import-export trade. There are major malls they run called China Town and the Great Wall. Some of them have been in the country for 30 years. There are plenty of Chinese-Romanian children who were born in the country. China does not permit dual citizenship, so their parents usually take out Romanian citizenship for the children because it is more advantageous.
There are now refugees coming into Romania to claim asylum. They come from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Mali and Eritrea. Romania is not as wealthy as Germany or Sweden, but it is still in the top third of economies. Even the poorest people in Romania have more than enough to eat. Even the bottom decile of society has electricity and running water, and every child goes to school until the age of 18.
In 1989, Romania saw the only bloody revolution in the year that communist dictatorships fell all across Eastern Europe. The communist president, Ceaușescu and his wife were overthrown and executed by firing squad after a farcical and rushed trial in which even their defence counsel argued against them.
In the 1990s, horrific images were released of Romanian orphanages. Many children were abandoned by indigent parents. Disabled children were most likely to be dumped by their families. Unfortunately, even to this day, some Romanians have a barbaric attitude towards disabled people. The fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu did not solve Romania’s problems instantly. Former officers of his secret police – the Securitate – held the levers of power because they had had access to the best education and could speak foreign languages. The transition to capitalism only came gradually in the 1990s. Western Europe thought of Romania as synonymous with poverty.
Ion Iliescu, the first post-communist President of Romania, had been Ceaușescu’s right-hand man until only a few months before Ceaușescu’s ouster. Everything that Ceaușescu was guilty of, Iliescu was also guilty of. Until 1989, Romania held political prisoners by the thousand in inhumane conditions. People were not even allowed to travel from one county of Romania to another without permission. There was no freedom of expression. Elections were flagrantly rigged. Horrendous tortures were used on dissidents. People had just enough food to sustain life. There were regular power cuts, meaning people had to walk up the stairs in 10-storey apartment blocks.
In the 1990s, many people moved abroad. Many entered Western European countries on tourist visas but worked illegally. Some were caught stealing. Anti-Romanian prejudice began to emerge in Western European nations. People called them thieves, prostitutes and beggars. Now that Romanian communities have been settled in Western Europe for a generation, the prejudice has abated.
Even in 2009, there were Gypsies who went around on horse-drawn carts. They used this equine mode of transport not for fun nor out of a desire to be quaint. For them, using horses to pull their carts was a practical means of getting about.
The Gypsies left Gujarat a thousand years ago. They diffused throughout Europe but are found in largest numbers in Slovakia and Romania. Gypsies often have an Indian phenotype and speak a language related to Gujarati. There is considerable racialism against Gypsies in Romania. They were held in servitude until 1859. In the 1940s, there was genocide against them.
The Romanian dictator who ordered the genocide is sometimes adulated by a few as a national hero. To this day, Gypsies tend to be on the lowest economic tier and are almost never found in the learned professions. Gypsies are around 10% of the population of the country.