(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 23)
Prime Minister Isarescu has handed to Romano Prodi, president of the Executive Commission in Brussels, the medium-term economic strategy requested by the European Union as a condition for the beginning of accession talks. Unfortunately, the document does not mention any intention on the part of Romania to privatise public utilities. This was the result of trade union centrals opposing for another ten years the privatisation of national companies in the public utility industry (electricity, heating, oil, gas and common transportation). To this position of the trade union leaders – I repeat, union leaders and not unions, which is not the same since leaders’ representation is increasingly questionable – the Government adopted a disastrous, typically Romanian attitude. Since the orders from Brussels were that the Strategy should be the expression of a consensus among political forces, the social partners and the civil society, and would be applied regardless of the political cycle and the parties in power – guaranteed by their signing of a common support statement – the Government made a lamentable decision: since there is no consensus on this issue, the problem does not exist! This is how the Strategy, in a restricted form, reached Brussels without any reference to the subject. With plans – we are told – that, by May 15, when the Strategy should be finalised in its integral and definitive form, the issue should be negotiated with union leaders. A lukewarm and unacceptable solution! If it was about a priority to one sector or another, about the privatisation of the defence industry to foreign capital, problems were indeed controversial and could not be held in suspension until clarification and consensual decisions. But it is a crucial problem that cannot be negotiated and cannot be controversial. In our era, thanks to technological developments in general and computer developments in particular, public utilities objectively and inevitably become sectors open to competition, to the benefit of consumers, and privatisation is only a way of opening to competition. The tendency is unstoppable, it is happening everywhere in the world, whether or not union leaders in Romania want it. A global steamroller won’t stop in the dry stumps of picturesque Romania. And then, the decision to sell something is up to the owner and the owner alone. In this case, to the Romanian state! Unions should decide whether to sell or not only in the case of their own patrimony. And public utilities are not unions’ patrimony! So instead of becoming the laughing stock of the world and suggesting in Brussels that business with Romania is not preferable, the Bucharest Government should have stopped playing and sent the Strategy without the union leaders’ signatures if they wouldn’t sign, but with a clear commitment to privatise public utilities. Union leaders can shout all they want, pull their people into the streets, if they can. Anyway, we don’t know if people will take to the streets for this much only because their leaders call them. All their recent attempts to take people out into the streets whenever they wished have almost always failed. Up to their ears in politics – as proven by the recent unacceptable agreements with some parties in exchange for union leaders on their lists – union leaders have opened a gap between them and the people whose interests they are called to protect and promote. Anyway, public utility employees are among the best paid in Romania, and taking to the streets will not have any good impact on the populace. There are so many truly misfortunate people in Romania, who are indeed entitled to coming into the streets! But if they do it, they will do it without the call of union leaders, whom they have taxed already for pursuing political interest that has nothing to do with their concerns. Unfortunately, union leaders can unequivocally exploit the only instance of a privatised public utility so far: ROMTELECOM, an example that is not only to be followed, but inadmissible. Not only has the most profitable of public utilities been sold for nothing. In fact, it was not even a privatisation: the Romanian state’s monopoly was replaced with the monopoly of another state, because the buyer, OTE, is owned by the Greek state. Even worse, the privatisation contract contains the unacceptable clause of maintaining this monopoly until 2002, with no other competitor admitted to the market, thus undermining the very motivation of privatisation, which is not an end in itself but a way to open to competition. Even worse, although the buyer was allowed to maintain the monopoly, the Romanian state did not reserve even minimum control over the rates, and the new ROMTELECOM, just like the old one, keeps defying the consumers with ever higher prices for services of unchanged quality. Indeed, rather than such a privatisation, we could have settled for none! From this point of view, the union leaders are right. There has been suspicion upon suspicion about the illegal commissions for those on the Romanian side who perfected and authorised the ROMTELECOM privatisation. Romanian judicial bodies should start proper legal action, if for no other reason than to rule out suspicion that they can compromise one of the most important processes of making the Romanian economy competitive. The unfortunate case with ROMTELECOM must not be used in the attempt to stop a process that, in fact, cannot be stopped. If they are really dying for Romania’s good, union leaders should ask only for what is normal and for what they are entitled to: public control with union participation, if they want, over public utility privatisation, to assure a transparent process, compliance to legality and a profit as high as possible, in the quality-price ratio, for the consumer, so that an inadmissible experience like that with ROMTELECOM never happens again. But unfortunately, it is not concern for Romania that drives union leaders, but their own interest. Even in our idle political class, so united in its idleness, regardless of the position in the parliament spectrum, a few leaders have changed in ten years. But union leaders haven’t! If they haven’t themselves turned to politics, they have kept their positions at the unions! With their request to freeze privatisation in public utilities, they are securing another ten years of easy living for themselves. Union members should be very aware that, unfortunately, their leaders have not prepared at all the union movement for a privatised economy, with no trade union structure existing in the private sector, which is a tragedy! And then, not only for their own peace of mind, but for their very existence, the existing union leaders have every interest to perpetuate state ownership, especially in public utility monopolies, the only place that can assure their survival for another while, because the rest of the state sector is already in shambles. This is the only way for them to talk to the Government, to growl at it and blackmail it. Mr. Isarescu, you know this just as well as anyone else. There is really no use in being the laughing stock of the financial and business community for the likes of Costin, Hossu, Todoran or Chirita!