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Romania’s Road to Accession - The Need for an Environmental Focus

1. Introduction

In December 2002, the European Council in Copenhagen concluded negotiations for the biggest enlargement in the history of the European Union. On the first of May 2004, the 15 current Member States will be joined by ten of the 13 candidate countries,¹ which will bring 75 million new citizens into the European Union.

The European Council reaffirmed the irreversibility of the accession process for Romania and Bulgaria and confirmed the objective to grant them membership in 2007. The Council recognised their progress in meeting the accession criteria so far, but underlined also that major reforms still needed to be implemented. A roadmap put forward by the European Commission just before the Council provides Bulgaria and Romania with clearly identified objectives and gives both countries the possibility of setting their own pace of accession. Furthermore, The European Council stressed the importance of the countries stepping up their preparation, including ensuring that the Copenhagen criteria are met,² and implementing the commitments undertaken so far.

This strategic report looks at the situation of Romania. At this stage of the enlargement process and after the renewal of the EU commitment to Romania, it is important to ensure that Romania’s own quest for accession does not lose momentum. This will require Romania to devote more attention than ever to the serious environmental problems it faces, including to strengthen the government’s ability at national, regional and local levels to meet the administrative and investment challenges in the environment sector.

Denmark has provided significant support to both Bulgaria and Romania in the area of environment, aimed at assisting them to solve their most urgent environmental problems and to build the environmental management structures needed to implement the EU environmental requirements.³ Under the Government Strategy on Support to Eastern Europe 2002, Danish bilateral assistance to the CEE applicant countries will cease in 2004 when they have been accepted as members. For the intervening period until the end of 2003, Danish assistance is to focus on enabling the applicant countries to achieve the requirements of EU membership, including in the environment sector.

The purpose of this report is to identify the key problem areas and challenges related to the EU environmental acquis that Romania will need to address in order to stay on track for accession by 2007. It reviews the priority actions and assistance needed by Romania to succeed in the accession process. Finally, it considers the measures that should be taken in the near future to maintain Romania’s pace in carrying out the reforms, investments and capacity building required to meet the obligations of EU membership.

The aim is to identify the major pre-accession challenges which Romania faces today in the environment sector, as a possible guide for future actions by the Romanian Government and other donors.

The contents of this report have been requested by the Romanian environmental authorites in the co-operation with the Danish Ministry of the Environment as a rounding-off of the Danish-Romanian efforts. The purpose of the report is to illustrate the status of the environment and indicate possible solutions to the problems.