Romania takes EU helm amid tensions with Brussels

Romania took over the EU’s rotating presidency yesterday at a tumultuous time for the bloc and just days after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker voiced doubts about the country’s ability to do the job. Brussels is already at loggerheads with the increasingly populist government in Bucharest on multiple fronts and Juncker’s comments highlight some of the strains.

Romania will be in charge for the next six months as the European Union faces a series of key tests -- Brexit, parliamentary elections in which eurosceptics will vie for increased influence, and wrangling over the next budget. Romania, which takes the presidency for the first time as it succeeds Austria, has been one of the EU’s most consistently europhile member states since it joined in 2007. But its left-wing government has recently begun to adopt the sort of nationalist rhetoric expounded by nearby Hungary and Poland.

In remarks to Die Welt on December 29, Juncker said that even if Romania was “technically well prepared” for the presidency, the “Bucharest government has not fully understood what it means to preside over the countries of the EU.” The EU presidency “requires a willingness to listen to others and a willingness to put one’s own concerns in the background.

I have some doubts about this,” Juncker said. One of the main reasons for the cooling of relations between Bucharest and Brussels is the PSD’s planned overhaul of Romania’s judiciary, which the government says is aimed at clamping down on “abuses” by judges and magistrates. But the European Commission wants the reforms scrapped, saying they undermine the fight against corruption in one of the EU’s most graft-prone states.