Rubrics » Bridging News
Between Brussels and Bucharest: Fiscal Reform, Austerity, and the Politics of Legitimacy in Romania
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Romania’s fiscal position has deteriorated significantly since 2019, culminating in a budget deficit of 9.3% of GDP in 2024 — the highest in the EU —, while public debt is rising and projected to exceed 60% of GDP by 2026 amid slowing growth and structural rigidities. This article assesses the arithmetic of Romania’s fiscal challenge (deficit, debt, revenue/expenditure mix), situates it within the broader EU context (peer countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland; EU-27 average), and examines the politics of legitimacy surrounding consolidation. Using data from Eurostat, the Romanian Fiscal Council, and Eurobarometer 103 (Spring 2025), it argues that without credible reform of both spending and revenue, and a transparent communication strategy, fiscal adjustment may undermine social trust and legitimacy. The article closes with a recommended sequencing of measures that protect investment and social floors while restoring credibility. More
The Hegemon and the Growing Pressure on Limited Resources
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The recent announcement that the Trump Administration will reduce its forces in Romania by not replacing the forces here on rotation has caused consternation in the political environment and in society, in the context of the challenges of the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s mixed messages, over time, regarding military support for US allies. The partial withdrawal is not a surprise except in the context of the eternal present of the 24-hour media cycle – the first declarations of intent came to light in March 2025, and the respective forces were part of the additional forces sent by the Biden Administration in the initial phase of the war in Ukraine in 2022, when the allies feared a potential conventional war on their own territory. Whether right or wrong, the Trump Administration does not seem to believe that Russia has the capacity to attack a NATO member in any other way than hybrid and unconventionally in the immediate future, given the situation in the war in Ukraine and the losses suffered by Russia (issues such as drone intrusions being solvable by other means such as the acquisition of MEROPS systems and other anti-drone systems). President Trump’s mercurial changes in attitude towards Ukraine and President Zelensky also fuels anxieties among allies, through a wrong conflation between the American will to help Ukraine and the credibility of the guarantees to NATO Treaty allies. However, the emphasis on the analysis of the movement of American troops through the lens of a shortcoming of the governments of the affected countries or a possible anti-European hostility of the Trump Administration has become excessive and has marginalized in the public space a rational discussion about the constraints under which any Administration in Washington DC operates. Such an analysis would help us become more realistic about American resources in the multipolar world and stop reacting with shock to American moves. Romania, like other US partners, needs to understand the US in order to develop and implement strategies to get what they want from the Americans. Europe has proven since 2016 and until recently that it finds it very difficult to act in this way, generating awkwardness and counterproductive interactions in a complicated relationship that had become more uncomfortable anyway. More
“Sense and Sensibility”: Forward-Looking Back
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 The year 2025 can be understood economically not only through its conjunctural indicators, but also through the fertile tension between “sense” and “sensibility”, remarkable, in their distilled, essentialized embodiments, as science and art. By the way, we just celebrated a quarter of a millennium since the birth of Jane Austen, the author-global-phenomenon, who treated and titled, in her debut novel (Sense and Sensibility), the intellect-affection duality, active in each of us and in all our societies. Beyond routine-becoming boom-bust cycles, there is an “exceptional economy”, in which value is not generated linearly, but through ruptures at the level of clichés and taboos. The process is not always happy – the “brain” conceives evil, and the “heart” does not thwart rage. However, science/Truth and art/Beauty – with a quasi-quantum shrewdness – converge in the compass of the Good. More
Colonies and Freedom: Why Some Flourish and Others Fail
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 A brief scrutiny into the living conditions of former colonial nations reveals a perplexing motif: today, nations that abound in resources prized in the past lag behind initially agrarian countries that showed little promise. Economists Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley Engerman find such contrasts between British offshoots like Jamaica and the United States and French settlements like Canada and Haiti. Even Argentina, whose name captures the original belief that it was lush with silver, was relatively barren compared to its Spanish neighbours, which are presently less developed. The two economists surmount this paradox by observing that regions with a high and immediate productive potential – where, for example, coffee and sugar cane plantations were instituted – are also the places where the highest inequality installed. A thin elite, formed predominantly of settlers, that was solely interested in exporting the harvested commodities back home, concentrated almost the entirety of wealth, with little distribution to lower echelons. This class perpetuated its privileges by shaping institutional arrangements to its advantage, holding to the reins of power and prohibiting cultivators from owning property or selling produce, without conceding any rights. While regimes periodically changed, and elites were replaced, the practices of predecessors continued as new rulers faced little pressure to conduct reforms, leading to inequality that remained puzzlingly persistent up to recent times. More
Bucharest-Ilfov Region, European Leader in Work Intensity but Encircled by Poverty
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The capital region of Romania is the European leader in work intensity, according to data presented by Eurostat for 2024. While 7.9% of people in the EU lived in a household with very low work intensity, the lowest shares among EU regions were in the capital regions of Bucharest-Ilfov in Romania (0.6%), Bratislavský kraj in Slovakia (0.8%) and Warszawski stołeczny in Poland (1.1%). More
The Evolution of Money and Payment Systems
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 In the modern era, money and payment systems have been characterized by the use of official currency (banknotes and coins, cash), issued by the central bank, as well as private currency (scriptures, account money), created by commercial banks by establishing demand deposits and issuing credit cards and other financial instruments. Payment systems that have emerged recently – such as, for example, Alipay, WeChat, Venmo or PayPal – are based on a new financial technology (fintech), but are still linked to bank deposits and credit cards. As a result, these new systems constitute an evolution, not a revolution, as bitcoin supporters claim. More
Turning from 3 to 4 Seas – Greece’s Gamble on 3SI
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 3SI’s transformation from a CEE cooperation framework into a broader regional platform reached a pivotal moment with Greece’s accession as its 13th member during the 2023 Bucharest Summit. This expansion, which literally added a fourth sea to the initiative’s geographic scope, represents more than symbolic growth, it signals a strategic recalibration that has proven mutually beneficial for both Athens and the evolving regional architecture. More
Unfinished Poems and Eternal Myths: Hungary ‘54 and Holland ‘74
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 I have not lived through Hungary 1954 or Holland 1974, yet I feel them more deeply—perhaps more vividly—than anything I’ve personally witnessed or endured in my decades as a football fan (which started with USA ‘94 and England ‘96). Football thrives on myths. Immortal stories, some achingly painful, like those two etched in the sport’s soul. Both defied nature, logic, the very order of things. More
The Cost of Corruption
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The “National Defence Strategy for the Country for the Period 2025-2030”, recently adopted by Parliament, considers that a major vulnerability for Romania’s national security is corruption. It constitutes a serious risk for national security, as it weakens state institutions, affects the economy and erodes citizens’ trust in each other and in the democratic political system. More
The Lighthouse Effect – How Romania Can Beam Energy Across Europe
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 For centuries, the Black Sea has been a vital crossroads between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Today, renewed geopolitical turbulence and the discovery of vast energy resources are turning the region into a sea of opportunity, especially for Romania. More
The Amfiteatru Economic Journal and the Collective Dimension of Intellectual Friendship
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Since September 1999, when, emerging from a circle of intellectuals from Buzău (academics, journalists, and economists), and at the initiative of Professor Sandu Costache and Professor Vasile Dinu, the Amfiteatru Economic journal was founded within the University College of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies in Buzău, until October 2025, nearly 26 years have passed. Let us call them “the first 26”. More
Pluralism or Prestige? Why Economics Still Needs the Courage to Talk to Itself
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Academic disciplines, like nations, cultivate myths about their origins. Economics especially. Some say it was born from rational choice. Others swear by spontaneous order. Some invoke institutions, others values. Each camp writes its own genealogy; each believes the plot finds its resolution in itself. Yet if there is one lesson that social sciences should have learned by now, it is this: intellectual monocultures are lethal. A discipline does not collapse because it disagrees – it collapses because it stops disagreeing. More
