On 3 February, Balkan Insights carried an article saying that 30 years after the revolution, the heirs to the communist regime’s infamous secret police service remain impregnable and unaccountable – the undisputed victors of the country’s botched transformation. Notwithstanding numerous elections and EU membership, the real winners of Romania’s transition to democracy are the security elite – the former members of the Securitate, and their successor generation, who protect their elders’ fortunes as they make their own. It is said that 1991 national security laws, which they basically wrote themselves, made the services unaccountable and enabled their economic empire. Anti-corruption campaigns gave them the power to control judges and politicians. But nobody effectively controls them. The reformist government that took power in 2017, with the intention of finally checking the clout of the security elite, has been obstructed at almost every turn.
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