Eugenia Gușilov: There are differences between the northern and the southern part of the EU’s east

Vladimir Mitev

Eugenia Gușilov is the founder of ROEC – the first independent energy studies think tank and energy-focused consultancy in Romania. A Fulbright alumna and a graduate of Columbia University, New York (USA), she has a Master of International Affairs with a concentration in International Energy Management and Policy and a Certificate from the Harriman Institute with a thesis analyzing the Russian Production Sharing Agreements. Her areas of expertise cover: strategic and commercial analysis of energy markets, oil and gas policies, and energy economics.

This is the first part of a two part interview. She shares her view on the evolution of the region of Central and Southeastern Europe after the start of the war in Ukraine. She is also asked by Vladimir Mitev to what extent citizens and NGOs could be a force for change in the region, which brings about regional cooperation and “dynamic identity” (interconnectedness).

Eugenia Gușilov recognized that in the last 30+ years there has been significant economic development in Romania and the region and the civil sector has some achievements too. But she remains unsatisfied with the accomplishments. She reminds that just 20-30 kms away from the big cities in Romania there is often a completely different economic and social picture, that resembles more 20th rather than 21st century. And the civil society in Romania in her view still has a way to go until it becomes a truly influential factor. The successes regarding the building of a hospital with donations, the appearance of an independent investigative media, funded by citizens or others, are more exceptions in her view, while the general situation of civil organizations remains one of relative weakness.

Mrs Gușilov, we start this interview by trying to find out to what extent a certain theory about our region is true or is it just a story in the press. The theory is that after the European elections and the political difficulties of the governments in Germany and France as well as the quarrels between the two countries, after the rise of Poland in our region and after the fact that there are already EU accession negotiations with the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, somehow the centre of power in Europe is moving eastwards.

Based on your experience, to what extent do you think such an eastward shift in the EU is really happening? Or is it rather just a media discourse?

Well, there is definitely a lot happening and the most relevant things that have happened in the last two years have happened in the eastern part of Europe. So, there definitely has been more focus on our region than before. Firstly, because of the ongoing conflict on the eastern border of Europe. And secondly, because it forces the Western world (EU and NATO) to articulate a response (and update it periodically)  to what is happening in this part of the world. So yes, definitely what is happening in Ukraine, what has been happening for the last two years, is shifting the centre of gravity. 

How this conflict will end will shape what Europe will be and what the Western world will be afterwards. And it will also determine the outcome and significantly influence what happens in other parts of the world, particularly with Taiwan. We also see, at least I see, the conflict, Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, as part of a wider war between democracies and autocracies. Another front of that same war is now in the Middle East between Israel and the Iranian tentacles in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah.

So yes, this region and what has been happening in our region for the last two years will redefine what the West is and what place Europe will have in the world. A lot depends on our response and our willingness to support Ukraine against Russia. So, to the extent that we are able to rise to that challenge and see this conflict end in a just peace(not just push Ukraine into submission to Russia), to the extent Europe and the Western world can do that, I think we’ll see not only a new Europe, but also a much more significant Eastern Europe as part of the EU bloc.

I understand that you see the importance of our region rising. But how should the countries in the region, especially countries like Romania and Bulgaria, react to that? And what does this increased importance of the region mean for them? Maybe it’s not only positive, maybe it’s more complex than that…

What I see is a discrepancy between how the Eastern flank approaches this very issue. For example, how the north-eastern countries, the Baltic states and Poland, are dealing with it. They’re also part of the larger Northern European ecosystem, which also includes Sweden and Finland. There is very strong cooperation in the north-eastern part of Europe. And there is a little bit weaker cooperation in the southern part. We see Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, which are not so articulate in their actions. Sometimes in the case of Romania, we hide what we really do for Ukraine. We don’t say it publicly. We boast that we do a lot, but we don’t say what we do exactly. 

Bulgaria again has internal problems. Turkey sometimes looks more like a friend of Russia and behaves more like a friend of Russia than a NATO member. This is not out of love for Russia, we might assume, but out of economic interest, because Turkey has made a lot of money in the last two years by acting as an intermediary between Russia and the West, maneuvering between the sanctions imposed by the West and helping Russia to evade them.

So you’re seeing a much more chaotic development here in the southern part of the EU’s and NATO’s south-eastern flank. And you’re seeing much more cohesion and determination and commitment and public articulation of a very strong support for Ukraine in the north, as opposed to the southern part of Europe. Even though countries like Bulgaria have given significant military support to Ukraine in 2022, even though Romania says it’s doing a lot but doesn’t say what, and Turkey is sort of playing more for itself than for the NATO alliance that it’s part of.

That’s what I see.

What explains this more complex, if I may say so, position of the countries on the southern part of the eastern flank? They are also NATO and EU countries. One could imagine that they have the same security commitments to NATO and they also have Western European investments in them, which influence their decision making.

So what is the reason for this different position from the north-eastern countries?

I think there’s a lot more kinship and, possibly, historical affinity among the northeastern countries in Europe than between, let’s say, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.  What unites Romania and Bulgaria is perhaps the Orthodox faith. In this axis you can also include Greece.

I see these countries more as the soft underbelly of Europe and the region most likely to fall in the event of an attack. It is the region that Russia would have less problems attacking, if it decided to do so. And we have seen two-three days ago during the hearings in the German parliament where the head of the intelligence services says that it is very likely that Russia will attack NATO or a NATO country sometime around 2030. While most of this attention is focused on the North, I think there things are much more advanced in terms of societies’ and economic preparations, military investments.

The countries that are less prepared to withstand or face such an attack would be, I think, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, if something like that happened. This is the soft axis and the most vulnerable place on the eastern flank, in my opinion.

Okay. In this situation that you just described with the differences between north and south on the eastern flank, to what extent does the idea of greater regional cooperation, also between north and south on the eastern flank of NATO and part of Europe, make sense and do you see any push in that direction?

I think that cooperation is always better than competition, especially when you talk about cooperation among EU member states or among NATO member states. But before we cooperate with the northern countries, I think the first thing to do is to cooperate with the neighbouring countries For Romania such countries areBulgaria, Ukraine, Turkey.

It makes sense to first create some kind of common areas of interest and common actions and common projects between these countries. And then, as a second order of business, to talk about greater South-North or North-South cooperation with countries like Poland or the Baltic states, because they, as I perceive them, are much more advanced in organising themselves on a regional level than we are here in the South. And that means everything from, let’s say, military cooperation to economic projects and joint infrastructure projects.

It means going ahead and making all the investments with all the available money that we currently have for our region. I’m talking and thinking specifically about Romania, because after 2027 this money stream will dry up. The available financing, the funding, will not be the same. Its level will decrease. So, in a way, now is the key moment to make all these investments, to accelerate regional projects, if we want to work on some projects like this, because it will be more difficult, especially in terms of financing, after 2027.

If we take Bulgaria and Romania and their cooperation, we can see that it is going well in the areas of defense and security. Perhaps this is explained not only by the war in Ukraine, but also by the fact that these are areas in which our partners have an interest and probably facilitate a better trust between the two nations or the allies of the two nations. But still, you are certainly right that it is not a large-scale cooperation. The infrastructural connectivity between the two countries is low, and the nations or the people of the two countries do not know each other very well. Perhaps are not very interested in each other either.

So, I’m wondering if you would say that the way forward is not cooperation across the region or greater integration across the region, but maybe looking up to your neighbours, who can be the agent of change in this direction? Which could be either the social class or the interest group, that can really bring together our region, the southern part of the eastern flank.

Difficult question, because we have a difficult situation in Romania right now with elections, very important elections in November and December, parliamentary elections, as well as two rounds of presidential elections, where for the first time the outcome is not clear. It is not clear who will be the winner of these elections. There is a quite significant polarisation in Romanian society, in the sense that about 42-44% of Romanian society lives in economic hardship, in economic difficulty, and these are the people who mostly vote for the Social Democratic Party. Then there are those, you know, the middle class, the more entrepreneurial, well-travelled, educated segment of society, who would have normally voted for the National Liberal Party, but now it’s not so clear that the National Liberal Party will get those votes, because there are other parties, newer ones that have appeared.

I mean, the vote of this entrepreneurial middle class is going to be much more divided than it was in the previous elections, where you had this clear Social Democratic Party versus the National Liberal Party. But now there’s also the Union to Save Romania Party, there’s this new party called REPER, and there’s a new party called SENS. We have in terms of the presidential elections, independent candidates. We didn’t see that many independent candidates in the previous elections, or they were not credited with having a real chance. But now, at least two new candidates have a real chance and they’re going to draw a significant part of the vote.

One of them is Mircea Geoană, who is running as an independent, although he used to be the leader of the Social Democratic Party. And then you have George Simion, the leader of the AUR alliance, who could also get somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the vote. That’s not small, that’s significant.

So, we have newcomers who are changing the arithmetic of the vote in these upcoming elections. Things in Romania are not so clear-cut, because if we divide Romanian society, we have the haves (the more educated, more entrepreneurial people, who are Western-minded, who appreciate the opportunities that Romania’s EU membership brings).That’s somewhere between 50-55% of society. And then you have the have-nots, the people who have really been left behind. 

Even if you look at Romania’s economic growth, yes, our GDP has grown impressively since we joined the EU, but this economic growth hasn’t been spread evenly across the different social classes and segments of society. Romania still has huge inequalities. There are regions that are very well off, where you have economic development, where you have growth.  Bucharest produces 25% – a quarter of Romania’s GDP. And then you have some of the poorest regions in the EU, in the eastern part of Romania, specifically  Romania’s Moldova region, which is part of Romania, where you have such poverty that you can’t believe that people could be living in such improper conditions in a EU member country.

The disparities are quite big to the extent that we say you can travel maybe 20 or 30 km and you can visit different centuries. There are people who live 30 km apart, but they live in different worlds. Some live in the more developed infrastructure of the cities, and others live in pre-modern times. 

So, it’s not easy to answer your question because who can influence politics…

The future and the outcome is written simultaneously by many hands. It’s not one voice alone or one person alone that influences what the future will look like, but it’s the interaction of different factors, of different interest groups, of all these different social classes that are represented by different political parties. And, for the first time, we don’t know for sure who will win and what the government of Romania will look like from 2025 onwards.

I understand that our countries have a lot of social, political and other problems, but it was strange for me that when I asked you who can make the change, you were thinking exclusively in terms of who holds power in society. I know it’s very naive to say it or to ask it, but in a democracy, aren’t the people or the citizens the ones who might be able to do something? Could we think of the citizens of our region as agents of change? Do the citizens have the resources, the will or the experience to have their own agency in this situation where there is also a war in Ukraine?

They do have a certain amount of power, but we shouldn’t overestimate that power, because for all the support that has been given to building a strong civil society in Romania but also in Bulgaria, this sector is still very fragile and the many problems that exist in our countries make life very difficult for NGOs, because these are the bodies that have a more organised civil existence.

So, it’s not an individual voice, but NGOs who unite the interests of citizens around an issue, around acertain policy or the desire to do good and change the communities in which you live. But I would say that these 30 years of independence, post-communist independence, have not been enough to create a strong civil society, because civil society organisations are still very much dependent on external funding. So, as long as they continue to depend for funding  on western foundations, they do not have their own agency. Not entirely. You are not so strong if you have to depend on grants and, year to year you live in this precariousness: not knowing how you will make ends meet and if you will still exist as an organization next year. That means that this model of civil organization has not become self-sustainable. That’s why it is so crucial for there to be domestic “buy-in”, that is domestic support in the form of national programs, corporate funding as well as support from our own citizens. 

Many Western programs, especially the American ones, no longer see our region as a priority region. And that happened sometime around 2013-2014. They no longer think that we are a priority region for them to focus their democracy promotion efforts. They see the Eastern European countries as countries that should have already graduated. We have had 20 years of help from the Western world and now should be able to stand on our own two feet and develop. That’s how the West sees our region. So now, it is up to us. 

I would like to take this issue a little further, because, okay, I understand that maybe the West is not so interested in funding the NGO sector in our region at the moment, but we have examples in Romania where citizens’ donations led to the construction of a children’s hospital, and they collected tens of millions of euros, which were received, managed and with them the hospital was built by an NGO. You also have a situation where the mayors of Bucharest and Timisoara have their origins in the NGO sector, you have media that are somehow maybe NGO media, and maybe the list could go on, even the fact that there is an investigative media in Romania that has a budget of one million euros, and the enormous part of that budget is donations. For me, this is also a sign that maybe Romania and its NGO sector, including its civil sector, its investigative journalism, have a public and a critical mass in terms of people who support them or see something in their activity.

So doesn’t that change the perspective on the NGO sector in Romania a little bit?

It’s interesting that you bring this perspective from outside the country, so from a bit further away, you see the positive developments that we’ve had, which of course I can’t deny, but I would say that this amazing success that we’ve had in building this private hospital is not so much the success of the NGO, because the NGO was strongly personality driven. So, you had two very determined women who tackled a problem that nobody dared to tackle and whose mission resonated with large sections of Romanian society, because it’s a problem that everybody encounters or comes across, especially if you have a family, if you have children.

These are the most vulnerable members of our society and it’s the negative experiences of so many people while interacting with our state healthcare system that convinced so many Romanian citizens (350,000 of them) and also 8,000 companies to support this initiative. This success came out of the negative experiences with the healthcare system in Romania of so many of our citizens. Out of something bad, something good was created as a counter-reaction and to show that there is another way.

We don’t want to struggle and have poor interactions with the medical system. We don’t want to die from illnesses that are treatable anywhere else in Europe. The success was created by the negative experiences of so many people with the healthcare system. So many people wanted to do something to change that reality. We wanted it to be different. That’s in relation to the success of the hospital, built by the NGO “Give Life” (Daruieste Viata).

It’s an amazing success, but again, it’s unique. Just one example in the healthcare sector. Then you talk about the strength of independent investigative journalism, and again, you are quite right. Recorder is doing these amazing journalistic reports where they are looking into issues that are of great importance to everyone but which no one is approaching in this way. State institutions should investigate all these irregularities and abuses committed by people in power, by politicians, by clerics. We had an investigation some time ago, for example, into the dealings of the Church. 

Again, it’s something that upsets so many members of our society that each one of them sponsored as much as they could to try to do something about it. It’s out of this sense of helplessness, that people, especially the emerging middle class, the more educated people, the more Western side of our society, they support these new media platforms and independent journalism because all the other media is captured by business interests and political interests and are silent on so many important issues. That is why people have started to support independent journalism and investigative reporting, because no one else is looking and digging and analysing the topics that the independent media tackles.

So again, it’s out of a very bad experience, out of a lack of trust in the classic media landscape, which remains silent on issues that affect us all. So, again, this is one of the reasons that explains the success that we have seen in the last 5-6-7 years of the independent media platforms and investigative journalists in Romania.

Photo: Warsaw by night (source: Pixabay, CC0)

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