• “Corruption kills” – hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Romania for weeks during the cold winter of 2015-2016, echoing this slogan. The #colectivrevolution was sparked by the tragedy at the Colectiv night-club in the capital Bucharest, where 64 people died in a fire in November 2015.

    When the protestors realised the disaster was caused by irregularities overlooked by authorities, they turned against corruption with rage. As the expected results from years of a so-called war against corruption failed to materialise, the government of Victor Ponta resigned.

    Since then, Romania is often cited as a positive example of anti-graft measures, which is both true and false. The judicial reform has transformed Romania step by step. Anti-corruption institutions have been set up. Over the last decade, corruption perception in the country has shown an upward trend. Following the protests, Romania’s corruption ranking has clearly improved.

    Unfortunately, this is not necessarily because of the country’s outstanding performance, but because of increased levels of corruption in neighbouring countries. Tellingly, at the end of 2022, Austria vetoed Romania’s Schengen accession due to the level of corruption.

    Most corruption cases still concern public procurement procedures in Romania, and there are still serious problems with Romania’s border controls, but vetoing Schengen is counterproductive.

    Corruption cuts across borders. It is our common European problem. Whether we like it or not: we are bound together. Romanian society has a unique commitment to corruption-free politics and this needs European support.

    The veto, on the other hand, is hurting the people, not the criminals. While several central European countries show a growing indifference to corruption, it would be wrong to punish a society that does not think that way and still resists.

    Three men caught my eye in 2014 after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s annual summer speech on a sunny Transylvanian afternoon, in the spa town of Băile Tușnad (Tusványos). They were eager political pilgrims. I’ve seen a lot of strange things here, but this was really disturbing.

    Orbán gives a State of the Nation address in Romania every year, targeted at the country’s 1.2 million Hungarian minority. More than 500,000 of these have dual citizenship and the right to vote in Hungarian elections. Over 90% of those voters support Orbán’s Fidesz party. Orbán’s annual litany is truly an election-decider.

    The embarrassing detail was on their T-shirts: Orbán’s men wore Putin’s portrait.

    Since then, the bigger picture has become clearer. The Hungarian-Russian political alliance has now blossomed. At the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, this cooperation took on its own Transylvanian topicality.

    This war is about minority rights – as the Hungarian voters in Transylvania are told on a daily basis by the Hungarian state media and meme factories. And Russia and Putin personally (as well as Orbán) are the real champions of these minority rights. Putin is giving the Russians back their territories.

    Are Transylvania or Ukrainian Transcarpathia, also inhabited by the Hungarian minority, next? The propaganda offers no explicit promises but only floating, informal hopes.

    The Romanian majority in the polls is more in favor of the Ukrainian cause. Hungarian revisionism scares them. The war between Russia and Ukraine has a Hungarian-Romanian shadow.

    On a hot October evening last week here in Transylvania a Hungarian right-wing extremist announced that Hungarians must be prepared for the annexation of Transylvania, for the oppression of the Jews and the Roma, and one of the local journalists should be hanged.

    Romanian reactions to this were swift and fierce. Even the Prime Minister condemned the call for murder.

    The journalist who they demanded to be hanged was me. I don’t know what kind of T-shirt would protect people like me in this time of war.

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