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Abstract:
What impact does the European Union (EU) have on the development of good governance in
Romania? Does EU conditionality facilitate or hinder the transition towards good governance?
This brief policy-oriented chapter argues that the EU’s promotion of good governance in Romania
leads to some selective progress but, overall, to the persistence of bad governance. In
particular, the paper shows that Romania’s process of Europeanisation has resulted in 1. some
progress across three dimensions of governance (substantive legality, capacity and efficiency/effectiveness)
but 2. regress in three others (formal legality, impartiality and coherence). In other
words, reforms generate more substantive laws that are adapted to international/European
standards (best practices), but at the same time the new laws become instable, incoherent (contradictory),
hardly enforced and less general. In addition, reforms improve capacity (inputs)
and partly efficiency (outputs) or effectiveness (outcomes) but undermine the procedural and
structural aspects of government quality (impartiality, coherence), for instance through increased
politicisation and fragmentation of the state structures. Overall, the analysis suggests
that there is no transition towards good governance in Romania, despite selective progress.
