Nikolay Yotov, Bucharest
The Bulgarian Post
2007-01-15 09:54:58

These days after New Year ’s Eve the neighbors from this side of the Danube created the next squabble in their bilateral relations with fraternal Bulgaria . The sole difference this time is that they, so as we, are now in another category. Category, within which exist certain standards, created and settled because of the developed culture and understanding of the world, in which we all live. Not to mention, that above all that there is morality, and from juridical point of view – laws. The mayor of a city, known to Bulgarians from its recent history, placed on the most European river – the Danube – decided he can go around the international establishments and juridical documents.

The city of Giurgevo, also known as Giurgiu, is a flourishing border county-center city in Romania. It is positioned on the trace of Pan-European corridor №9 and railway corridor, beginning in Ostende, Belgium, passing Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Ruse, Sofia and reaches Istanbul and Thessalonica. The city is a partner in many international projects type “reconstruction and development” with countries like the U.S. and Denmark, from where a lot of financial gaps are filled.  With the New Year’s stepping in, Giurgiu’s mayor Lucian Iliescu decided he can save one of the others main resources for the City hall’s cash-boxes – border taxes, paid by Romanian and foreign drivers, coming and going on the Danube bridge.

Doesn’t matter they were condemned for months, as stopping the normal business relations between two civilized neighbor countries and especially after 1^st of January – simply as illegal. Problematic became the so called “environmental” and “transit” taxes. But only after the interference of the media, of the protests of the truck drivers, which went all over the world news exchange and made numbers of Romanians to wish they fall through the ground and disappear from shame in the very beginning of European play.

One has to admit the extreme difficulty of giving away such a large piece of the cake, prepared every year in the City hall. Only for the first half of 2006, the accounted sum from border taxes is over 10 million new lei (RON), or approximately 3.2 million euros. The value of the taxes in question varies between 12 and 65 euros, depending on vehicle type and size.
And may be the problem would have remained solely political, if there weren’t revealed some details on spending Bulgarian truck drivers and Romanian tourists’ money. Only for 2003 the Court of Accountancies in Bucharest has registered missing 13 billion old lei (ROL), or about 400 thousand euros. Missing. Needless to mention that according to the EU Accession Treaty Bulgaria and Romania are obliged to take down all boundaries before free movement of people, goods and capitals. Needless to mention – a county-center city mayor did not seem to care much about international law.

We read acknowledged daily Ziua and we find out he is giving billions for “juridical advices”, part of which goes to deputies’ pockets, as well as for new offices in the City hall, no one is allowed in. But he is the king in his own garden and he can also secure his son’s stolen vehicles traffic.  We read Cotidianul and we find out about non-match of 11 billion more ROL – apparently missing – registered by the Court of Accountancies. Over 300 thousand euros.  With all these zeroes, few question and exclamation marks strike. First, what gives such freedom of thinking and then of action to some local leader? Is that the political crisis in which Romania entered in the autumn of the last year? Is it the never-ending collision between Prime Minister and President, which led to the crisis in question? And which, in the end unlooses the bridles of the subordinates on all levels of the hierarchy and divides ruling parties into artificially created new political “species”, striving for the power?

Then – the complete negligence from the Bulgarian side on eliminating the illegal duties. Here, worthy exception is created by the keen Minister of European Affairs, today Commissioner Meglena Kuneva. She was insistently repeating the address of the European Court in Luxemburg to the governance of the city of Ruse. Only this week the executive Director of “Road Infrastructure” Fund Vesselin Georgiev led a Bulgarian delegation to Bucharest to “negotiate” on the “issue” on border taxes on Romanian side.
Second, rather funny, was the telephone chat between President Traian Basescu and mayor Lucian Iliescu, during which the idea of the long hand of the head of state was settled and his hysterics for years now for proving himself as the father and the leader of the nation. Alas, the most powerful man – at least according to the constitution – had to interfere, the Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, whose last idea was that his entrusted state will catastrophically discredit itself on the doorstep of its new home.

The Prime Minister, with needless diplomacy, but with sudden strike wiped out the local’s dreams of financial independence to the rest of his life. After personally shouted at him in his governmental palace, the inhabitants of this same building brought in, voted, accepted and enforced an order of discontinuing accounting specific taxes on the border line of Romania.  The answers of questions like who, when, where and how will draw the line of the provinciality, egocentric and short-sighted ideology in the conditions of association to a whole other world, alas, remain disturbingly away on the European horizon. When are we going to stop cheap neighborhood stumbles i.e. “George Buhnici – the journalist spy”, “taken down pants before the EU”, “Bulgaria – dangerous as Iran, don’t go there!”, “Privatization spy” and so on and so forth?
Nobody from the both sides of the Danube – politicians, diplomats, journalists, and friends – was ever able to tell me that until now.

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