Contexts...

The previous gathering of statistical facts and comparisons has also led to a recurring need of stating the context, in case it was not obvious from the entire blog...

Comparisons with the 3rd world may hold very well whilst reading some figures extensively summarised and published in Romanian press. However, whilst one may have a moment of 'ho-hum' and/or sympathy if one has read such comparable figures about certain corners of the globe, it is a radically different experience when same figures relate to an EU country.

EU rhetoric abounds in the discourses of Romanian leading political figures (alternating with begging towards the IMF for further funds, whilst introducing such desperate financial measures that they manage the absurd: completely ringfencing the Mafia circles running the country, but hitting the poorest the hardest...).

At the same time, the country is at the bottom of the tables when it comes to the usage (or as more technically put, absorbing) of EU development funds... simply because the key corrupt circles can't bring themselves to go through measly paperwork for measly grants, if they can perfectly operate perfectly outside the law at a governmental level even, and rake in vastly superior 'funds' ending up in their pockets...

So similarities with certain 3rd world autocratic regimes are very easy to make. But what makes it particularly annoying, is that the schizoid situation of a loudly propagandising EU country is having such easy comparisons made about its affairs.

The essence of the deplorable numerical facts is that this will continue for generations in the same pattern established in the last 20-odd years... Actual EU funds either go unused (as the elite can't be bothered frankly with such tedious routes to get their hands on some smaller funds) or the ones given for infrastructure development (as the core topic of previous posting goes) get diverted and/or 'disappear'... whilst the tangible realities those funds were supposed to deliver are hard to see...

Possibly some 10% of motorways from more than 50% of the used (vanished) budgets, built over ludicrous amount of time and for the highest cost per mile in the EU are the best examples... and one can meditate over such very post-communist 21st century typical schizoid reality whilst drives along the 40-odd miles of Transylvanian motorway...