A republic on the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe, Romania has a coastline on the Black Sea. Area: 237,500 sq km (91,699 sq mi). Pop. (1993 est.): 22,789,000. Cap.: Bucharest. Monetary unit: leu, with (Oct. 4, 1993) a free rate of 940.50 lei to U.S. $1 (1,425 lei = £1 sterling). President in 1993, Ion Iliescu; prime minister, Nicolae Vacaroiu.
The relative stability that characterized the period of government of Theodor Stolojan was maintained in 1993 under his successor as prime minister, Nicolae Vacaroiu, who, in the wake of a general election, was asked to form an administration by Pres. Ion Iliescu in November 1992. Vacaroiu continued to apply the economic reform measures recommended by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the early part of 1993, although both institutions expressed concern in the summer that the pace of privatization had slackened and threatened to withhold supplementary credits.
An association agreement, signed on February 1, marked the beginning of Romania’s integration into the European Community’s political and economic structures. Tariffs and quotas on most of Romania’s industrial exports to the EC were abolished, and those that remained were to be progressively eliminated over the following six years. At the EC summit in Copenhagen in June, a decision was taken to invite Romania, along with the other associate member states, to consultative minisummits to be held twice a year. In order to bring Romanian fiscal policies into line with EC practice, a value-added tax (VAT) was introduced on July 1. Further landmarks in Romania’s success in casting off its image of political turbulence and authoritarian government were its admission on September 28 to the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly and the U.S. Senate’s decision to grant Romania most-favoured-nation trade status on October 21.
The confusion surrounding the introduction of the VAT was symptomatic of many of the problems besetting the management of the economy. Although its application was limited to food and was fixed at a rate of 18%, shopkeepers took advantage of a government decision to abolish a ceiling on profit margins, which came into force on the same day, to raise food prices by up to 80%. Coming on top of the elimination of subsidies on May 1 on bread, milk, electricity, gas, and gasoline and an increase in customs duties from 5 to 20%, this price hike helped to create an inflation rate in consumer prices calculated by the Bank of Romania and by Western institutions to have reached 300% by the end of the year (the figure for 1992 was 210%). The growing discrepancy between prices and incomes fueled wage demands and led to a wave of strikes in August led by the miners in the Jiu Valley. The actions paralyzed the coal mining and railway industries, but the government successfully resisted the strikers’ demands. Nevertheless, the labour unrest reflected the high social cost of the reform program. Unemployment, standing at one million, or 9.3% of the working population, in September, showed only a small increase over 1992 and reflected the government’s policy of diverting its foreign credits to keep the mammoth heavy industrial plants afloat instead of using the moneys for restructuring. Economic performance maintained its downward spiral and was estimated to have fallen by 22% compared with 1992.
Progress in privatization remained checkered. Although a legal framework for privatization was put in place in 1991, the political will to carry it out remained weak. This was largely due to the government’s dependency for a parliamentary majority on the ultranationalist Party for National Unity of the Romanians and the Greater Romania Party, both of which opposed any significant privatization involving foreign capital. Outright ownership of land was denied to foreign companies, and more than 30% of the land confiscated under the Communists remained in the hands of the state. No new measures of significance were taken to return nationalized property to its original owners. The restrictions, coupled with the continued incoherence in fiscal legislation and its arbitrary application, kept foreign investment, which was largely restricted to joint ventures, to about $680 million by June 1993--a modest level in comparison with most of the other former Communist states of eastern Europe. The number of joint ventures rose in 1993 to 25,000 but most were small units, often shops set up by businessmen from Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. A pyramid investment scheme called Caritas, set up in 1992, attracted up to 50% of the population’s private savings before it reached a point in November when it could no longer make promised payments. Some four million people had handed over money to Caritas in the hope of making mind-boggling profits.
Caritas was also a manifestation of the search by large sections of the population for a miraculous cure for the economic malaise. Another was the phenomenon of crowds of more than 150,000 people lining up in Bucharest in October to touch the relics of an Orthodox saint said to have miraculous properties. The economic problems were matched by a growing breakdown of law and order that was particularly evident in the armed holdups of buses by gangs of thieves in the province of Moldova. Reported crime rose by more than 400% in 1993 compared with 1992. Racial attacks also showed an increase. Resentment between Romanians and Hungarians on the one hand and Romas (Gypsies) on the other exploded in Transylvania in late September when, after a Roma knifed a Romanian, the villagers lynched three Romas and torched 13 houses. The attack was but one of 16 incidents involving violence against Romas for which no arrests were made.
There were only cosmetic changes in the political scene. The ruling Democratic National Salvation Front changed its name to the Party of Social Democracy in Romania at its annual conference in July, and in the same month one of the main opposition parties, the Civic Alliance, split.
This updates the article Romania, history of.