Ambitions yet unrealized: Romania’s status and perceptions from the immediate eastern neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

As Romania has recurrently indicated in recent years that the main external objective is to consolidate the country’s profile in the region and, in particular, in its immediate eastern neighbourhood, this article explores Romania’s regional status and argues that, despite Romania’s aspirations of a higher status in its foreign outlook, externally, the country has so far only displayed a ‘small power’ behaviour. To study Romania’s status, the article investigates both internal and external perceptions of Romania’s capabilities underpinning status by building on data obtained from expert interviews, which were conducted in Romania, Ukraine, and Moldova.

KEYWORDS:

• Romania
• status
• Ukraine
• Moldova
• eastern neighbourhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Launched in 2007, BSS aimed at encouraging regional development and address economic and political challenges existing in the countries surrounding the Black Sea. Romania has been a vocal supporter – together with Bulgaria and Greece – of the creation of BSS (European External Action Service 2021).

2. The authors are aware of the conceptual challenges to define a ‘small power’ (see, for instance, Toje 2008, 200–203). Yet, we use ‘small power’ status, first, to clearly distinguish this category from ‘micro-states’ (e.g., Lichtenstein, Monaco, San Marino) and, second, to indicate in particular a state unable to project much power externally.

3. At the time being, this is the longest external land border (roughly 1840 km) belonging to a country, which is both a NATO and a EU member.

4. For further discussion see, for instance, Götz (2021).

5. Decision about which attributes to select to operationalize the concept of status is driven, first, by some of the most frequently identified factors in the literature and, second, by the specific regional context in relation to which Romania’s profile is analyzed (namely, vis-à-vis the immediate eastern neighbourhood).

6. References to Moldova and Ukraine figure most in the 2020 Romania’s National Defence Strategy.

7. Moldova was in 2020 the main recipient of Romania’s official assistance with 70.92% (roughly 47 million Euro) of the assistance provided at the bilateral level, while Ukraine received only 3.43% (around 2.3 million Euro) (Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2021).

8. All the affiliations indicated in Annexe 1–3 correspond to the date when the interview was conducted. All the opinions expressed in this study are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the institutions the interviewed experts are affiliated with.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-0073, within PNCDI III. Authors are thankful to Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, within Program 1 – Development of the national RD system, Subprogram 1.2 – Institutional Performance – RDI excellence funding projects, Contract no.11PFE/30.12.2021, for financial support.

Notes on contributors

Teodor Lucian Moga

Teodor Lucian Moga is lecturer in IR and European studies at the Centre for European Studies, Faculty of Law, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi (UAIC). He previously pursued a PhD in Economics and International Relations at UAIC and a MA in Political Science at the University of Manchester, UK. In the past he worked for the European Commission, British Embassy (Bucharest, Romania) and held appointments at the at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (Paris, France), the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies (Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany) and the Romanian Academy of Science. His research interests include the EU foreign affairs, NATO, EU-Russia relations, ENP, EaP, Ukraine, Republic of Moldova and Romania’s foreign policy.

Nadiia Bureiko

Nadiia Bureiko is ‘Ukraine Abroad’ Programme Director at the Foreign Policy Council ‘Ukrainian Prism’. Nadiia completed her post-doctoral research at the University of St. Gallen and a research fellowship at the New Europe College. Prior to this, Nadiia Bureiko obtained her MA in International Relations and PhD in Political Science at Yurii Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University where she also worked as an assistant at the Department of International Relations. Her research interests include the Europeanization process, Ukraine’s foreign policy, national identity.