Situation in Romania

In Romania there are about 5.5 millions of employees, 1.2 millions paid by state: teachers, medics, lawyers, police army, administration. The unemployment rate is about 4.2%. The increasing rate of GDP will be about 4.2% this year. One could say that it is better than in other countries of EU.

However it is not so . The situation of the working class is difficult. After entering the European Union in 2007 it decreased quickly both numerically and, worse, qualitatively.  And that is the main problem. Actually the working class has begun to decrease even before entering EU: the bankrupt privatizations that have led to the country's de-industrialization started ten years earlier, in 1997.  About 3,5 millions of Romanians are working outside, in other countries of European Union and not only; half of million are working in USA, Canada, UK and even Australia. That means almost parity: for every Romanian worker inside the country one Romanian worker outside the country. Another consequence of entering EU is the destroying of trade-unions. The law of trade unions in private sector makes them very volatile. According to the declarations of their leaders all the trade unions have about 2 million members; a very exaggerated number. A more realistic estimation the public sector trade-unions have 0.5 mil members and in the private sector another half of million. And the leaders of trade-unions are in general corrupt and useless to protect their members, with some tiny exceptions. The anti-communist policy of the government makes difficult the political work among the trade-union members.

As other countries from EU, Romania has given up big branches of its sovereignty. Unlike in the big remaining three (Germany, France, Italy) the capitalism in Romania capitalism is a periphery one. Romania has a double subordination: both to European Commission and to USA.  Thus the working people suffer a double exploitation: from the local bourgeoisie and from the great multinational companies. The power comes not from the people, but from the outside masters from Brussels and Washington. Of course the political forces fight in the Parliament among themselves, but they do not care about people. They care about their masters.

Basically in Romania there are two blocks. The govern is made from Social Democrat Party and the liberals from ALDE. They claim to be a center-left government. It is true that they have increased the net minimum wage from 170 to 250 euro/month – and they are very hated for that by the hardcore rightists from National Party, Union for Saving Romania and others. But they have kept the flat tax system (even decreasing it from 16% to 10%), they give money to the Royal House, they have moved the contributions from the employer to the employee and they have paid 4 bn dollars to acquire rockets from USA. The foreign policy is the same both at the govern and at the opposition: toadying to NATO, obeying to anti-Russian, anti – Chinese and in general anti all that could challenge the world domination of imperialist powers.

Shortly: the government is reactionary but the opposition is even worse.

There were presidential elections in 2015 which put in power the President Klaus Iohanis. At that time the prime minister was Victor Ponta, from the social democrats. A tragedy was used (a big fire in Bucharest which caused about 60 victims) to change him with a clerk from Brussels, Dacian Cioloș, a “technocrat” whose only quality was his blind submission to the orders from Iohanis, Brussels and Washington. In 2016 there were parliamentary elections won again by social democrats with a big majority. Iohanis used the anticorruption mantra to boycott all the good initiatives of the new government. He himself is accused of corruption. The anticorruption has become a slogan good to use against the political opponents. Actually the real struggle is geopolitical: for the Romanian resources and for using Romanians as cannon fodder against Russia. Romania has not only fertile land, but it also has oil and gas in the Black Sea. The idea is that these resources are not for Romanians, but for all EU citizens…

The activity of Romanian Socialist Party

Romanian Socialist Party (RSP) is a Marxist democratic and patriotic party. Its president is Constantin Rotaru. We try to make an anti-capitalist coalition. It is true that our results are rather modest: it is not easy to find militants from the working class. However, some of our members are very active in trade-union movement. Corneliu Riegler is the leader of the “Trade Union of the Young Teachers from Romania”; Simion Șomîcu is in the board of the “National Federation of Labour” affiliated to WFTU; Liviu Sandu is in the board of “Trade Union of Romania Long Way Drivers” and we have also organizations of retired persons. We have a class approach to the evolutions in Romanian society.

Our party openly advocates the dismantling of NATO and points out the insecurity generated by remaining in this imperialist organization. We have created friendship associations with countries that are demonized by the imperialism: with Venezuela, Cuba, Russia. We are among the few organizations critically with respect to EU. We do not advocate an exit from EU but we advocate for another EU, a democratic union of peoples, not of big corporations.  We fight against the anti-communist propaganda and try to create an agglutination of different Communist and Left tendencies. We had a Congress in 2010 which has decided the change of the name of our party in Romanian Communist Party. The decision was rejected by the Court and we are still waiting the decision of ECHR. 

Right now, the Romanian Communists are split in several parties: ours (RSP), The Communitarian Party  (its leader Petre Ignatencu sends his solidarity and best wishes to this international meeting), The Party of the Communists,  The Romanian Communist Party of the 21th Century. We try to arrive at an unity in action not only with them but also with other progressive forces: with DIEM25, DEMOS and with several left wing cultural organizations.  We think that building a kind of unity of the leftist and the anti-imperialist forces is a historical task, especially now when the fascist danger is approaching.