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Argos Media

As East and West Pull on Moldova, Loyalties and Divisions Run Deep - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...15moldova.html

Moldova Romania Traian Basescu Vladimir Voronin

shared by Argos Media on 15 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Since then, the reunification movement has faded to the margins of political life. Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy, an independent research organization, said only 15 percent of Moldovans would support unification with Romania if a referendum were held now. Political elites, meanwhile, have lost interest for pragmatic reasons.
  • Since then, the reunification movement has faded to the margins of political life. Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy, an independent research organization, said only 15 percent of Moldovans would support unification with Romania if a referendum were held now. Political elites, meanwhile, have lost interest for pragmatic reasons. “Not everyone wants to be second in Bucharest if they can be first in Chisinau,” said Konstantin F. Zatulin, director of the Moscow-based Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
  • But the question has never been entirely set aside, either. As recently as 2006, President Traian Basescu of Romania said, “The Romanian-Moldavian unification will take place within the European Union and in no other way.” The issue was churned up again by last week’s protests, when Romanian flags were raised at two government buildings. Mr. Voronin has said he can prove that Romanian agents planned and organized the protests.
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  • Moldova’s main opposition leaders announced Tuesday that they would not participate in a vote recount in disputed parliamentary elections, and the president of Romania angrily rejected accusations that Romanian agents were behind huge anti-Communist rallies last week.
  • “We will not allow Romanians to be blamed simply because they are Romanians,” President Traian Basescu of Romania said in an address to Parliament in Bucharest that was posted on his Web site. “We will not allow Romania to be accused of attempting to destabilize the Republic of Moldova. We will not allow Romanians who live across the Prut to be humiliated simply because they believe in an open society.”
  • Communists made a better-than-expected showing in parliamentary elections held April 5, leading to youth demonstrations that turned violent. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova immediately cut diplomatic ties with Romania, saying its secret services had staged the events in an attempt to topple his government.
  • Mr. Voronin ordered a recount of votes last Friday. But Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party said at a news conference that he would insist that the elections be invalidated and held again, Interfax reported. Mr. Filat said voter lists had included the names of long-dead people, minors and longtime expatriates.
Argos Media

As Jobs Die, Europe's Migrants Head Home - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25migrants.html

Europe Economy Immigration

shared by Argos Media on 25 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Mr. Mituletu, who is planning to return to Romania next month, is one of millions of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa who have flocked to fast-growing places like Spain, Ireland and Britain in the past decade, drawn by low unemployment and liberal immigration policies.
  • But in a marked sign of how quickly the economies of Western Europe have deteriorated, workers like Mr. Mituletu are now heading home, hoping to find better job prospects, or at least lower costs of living, in their native lands.
  • While unemployment is also rising in the Czech Republic, “it is much easier to be at home with family and with friends and not to have a job,” she said, “than to be here and not to have a job.”
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  • In Spain, where the growth has been the most explosive, the foreign population rose to 5.2 million last year out of a total of 45 million people from 750,000 in 1999, according to the National Statistics Institute. Ireland’s population, now 4.1 million, was also transformed, with the percentage of foreign-born residents rising to 11 percent in 2006 from 7 percent in 2002.
  • Alcalá, a Madrid bedroom community and the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, is home to so many Romanian immigrants — 20,000 by some estimates — that Romania’s president, Traian Basescu, campaigned here for parliamentary elections last fall.
  • But signs of the reverse migration of Romanians are already evident. “Slowly, slowly, they’re disappearing,” said Gheorghe Gainar, the president of a Romanian cultural association in Alcalá. “When you look for them, you don’t find them. Sometimes you ask a relative, and they say they’ve gone back.”
  • The reverse exodus from more prosperous countries in Western Europe is likely to add to the economic pressures already buffeting Central and Eastern Europe, where migrants from developing countries are in turn being encouraged to leave. The Czech government announced in February that it would pay 500 euros, or about $660, and provide one-way plane tickets to each foreigner who has lost his job and wants to go home. And in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, workers from China have been camped out in freezing weather in front of the Chinese Embassy for two months, essentially stranded after their construction jobs disappeared.
  • Like the Czech Republic, Spain is offering financial incentives to leave. A new program aimed at legal immigrants from South America allows them to take their unemployment payments in a lump sum if they agree to leave and not return for at least three years. The Spanish government says only around 3,000 people have taken advantage of the plan, but many others are leaving of their own accord.
  • Airlines in Spain are offering deals on one-way tickets to Latin America, and they say demand has increased significantly. Every day, Barajas airport in Madrid is the setting for emotional departures, as families send their jobless loved ones back home.
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