'Romania' - tagged features

Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone giant, plans to close down its huge factory in the German city of Bochum and move it to Romania. It’ll mean job losses and serious knock-on effects for the local German economy. But why is it moving? Nokia couldn't resist the temptation of producing their phones at a fifth of the current cost. 16 hundred kilometers east, everything from labour to electricity is a lot cheaper. 

During the communist regime in Romania very few people could afford a car. In post-communist Romania, salaries didn't stretch to this type of "luxury" transportation. And now -- just when more and more Romanians can afford their own wheels - can you really tell them to slam the car door shut and get on their bikes? Well, as Radio Romania International's Iulian Muresan points out that you can tell them, but in this case reality just ain’t that easy. 

In the region of Maramures, people are very relaxed about death. When they die, they’re buried in what’s called a "Merry Cemetery", where wooden crosses are painted blue and the epitaphs written on them are often amusing. For the villagers of Sapanta a life can be summed up in a few humorous rhymed verses. Radio Romania International's Iulian Muresan made the journey to find out more for Network Europe. 

Another European country that's had big difficulties maintaining a stable coalition government is Romania. With only a thin majority in Parliament the government has been unable to pass much needed anti-corruption laws. Alarmed by the high levels of corruption, the European Commission on Wednesday threatened to withhold a quarter of the farm aid Romania receives from the European Union. The EU agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, gave Bucharest one month to root out "serious irregularities" in its agricultural payments system or risk losing more than one hundred million euros in farms subsidies. 

Romania joined the European Union on January the 1st 2007. Initially the West feared a massive wave of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria. It wasn’t really like that. Romanians have continued to go to work in Italy and Spain as they used to do before Romania’s entry in the EU. But in recent months, Italian and Spanish newspapers have abounded in rather unflattering articles about the Romanian community there, which is the biggest foreign community in Italy, numbering according to official figures half a million Romanians. 

Remember that? The images themselves weren’t as graphic as it sounds. The whole thing was supposed to help promote European films. Sex sells. Well, Romania is seeing tangible results—An open-air theatre screening European movies is turning around a Bucharest neighbourhood. Radio Romania International's Iulian Muresan has more. 

In Romania the communist archives are still the skeleton in the closet for both politicians and high clergy alike. The Romanian Orthodox Church is now at a turning point after its Patriarch passed away at the beginning of the month. The search for his successor has reopened the highly sensitive issue of the relationship between church leaders and the communist authorities before 1989. Radio Romania International's Iulian Muresan reports from Bucharest. 

It’s possibly the slowest train in Europe… In Romania, crawling up through the wilderness of Maramures in the north of the country, is the Mocanitza train. In Romanian Mocanitza means a female inhabitant of the mountainous regions of Transylvania. Iulian Muresan from Radio Romania International reports. 

"The Union of Communist Youth" in Romania was one of the richest youth organizations in south-eastern Europe. 17 years have passed since the fall of communism, and Romania has not solved the problem of the properties and assets which belonged to the communist youth organization. In the battle for this heritage, civil society may be the no.1 looser. Radio Romania International's Iulian Muresan reports from Bucharest.