Costi Rogozanu on Romania's culture of corruption

A recent EU study on "Crime and culture" stresses that "Romanian citizens see corruption as a normal way of solving problems". The daily Cotidianul comments: "Here in Romania - and I'm not kidding - corruption is still seen as a form of resistance. A few people manage to resist with their art. But most people have survived by means of theft, which continues to be a form of protest. Here in Romania there is no culture of protest and criticism, only the fainthearted culture of theft. Without theft and corruption it wouldn't have been possible to survive under [former Romanian socialist dictator Nicolae] Ceauşescu. That is an enlightening principle. The truth is: without petty theft, we would hardly have had anything to eat at all in the 1980s. The problem is that we've carried forward this theft from the days of communism, placing it squarely on the capitalist agenda as a necessary quality. In other words: today's paradigm of necessity includes things like luxury cars."

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