BUCHAREST, December 31 -- No country has ever been less prepared, less qualified and less willing to assume the rotating presidency of the European Council than Romania. Their government is taking an increasingly anti-European path, one which threatens the country's future.In Brussels on December 29, the penny finally dropped. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, questioned whether Romania is ready for the political give-and-take of running the presidency of the European Council, which it assumes on January 1. Mr Juncker told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper: “I think the government in Bucharest hasn’t yet fully understood what it means to take the chair over the EU countries.” The role of the EU’s presiding country – held on a rotating basis for six months – includes setting the EU agenda and serving as a diplomatic go-between among the 28 member countries. Mr Juncker also pointed to deep domestic political divisions and said a “united front” at home is needed to foster unity in Europe. The ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD), now openly anti-European in words and actions, in stark contrast to the staunchly pro-European population at large (which includes the country’s president), makes such unity impossible. In a speech in early December that touched the realm of paranoia, the party’s leader Liviu Dragnea said that the European Union was “interfering” in Romania’s affairs. “The EU tells us to suspend laws passed by our parliament. I tell them that our parliament is sovereign. We are the Romanian people. We are not [George] Soros’s people, we are not a people who belong to greedy multinational companies.” With the possible exception Britain, which leaves the EU at the end of March, it is difficult to think of any member state that is less willing, less qualified and less well-prepared to take on the European presidency. Romania, having just celebrated 100 years since the unification of its three constituent parts (Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia) has never been more divided. As January 1 approached, the country’s government, nominally led by prime minister Viorica Dancilă but controlled by Mr Dragnea (whose various convictions for vote rigging and corruption prevent him from formally being PM), openly defied the president, Klaus Iohannis, by refusing to recognise his decision to prolong the mandate of the head of the country’s armed forces. For several days, Romania’s army had no commander-in-chief. Mr Dragnea even called for the president to be put on trial for high treason, after Mr Iohannis suggested that Romania was not ready to take on the EU presidency.
Even the country’s own European Commissioner, Corina Crețu, a member of the PSD before moving to Brussels, has become engaged in a very public dispute with the government in Bucharest over Romania’s failure to use European funds. “Romania is not in a position to pass up the chance of development simply to protect the pride of some politicians,” she said. “It is a shame that Mrs Dancilă and those around her are so poorly informed.”
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