Romanian politician recalls details on relations with Moscow as Russians vote new president

Ioan Mircea Pascu, a Romanian member of the European Parliament for the opposition Social Democrats (PSD), says in an interview for BBC and HotNews.ro that he regrets a direct line between the Presidency in Bucharest and Kremlin no longer exists. Pascu says economic relations between Romania and Russia should strengthen and that he believes Vladimir Putin will be the future prime minister of Russia.

He tells in the interview that the former USSR breached a promise made to Romania after signing a bilateral treaty in 1991, just after the anti-communist revolution. At the time, Moscow said it would conclude bilateral treaties with all its Eastern Europe satellites in a similar manner to the one signed by Romania, which said neither party would make deals with rivals and enemies of the other signatory of the bilateral treaty.

But it later proved that this was a provision applied only to the Romanian treaty, contrary to what Russia had promised.

Ioan Mircea Pascu argued that a huge public scandal that led to the interruption of a direct line between the presidency in Bucharest and the Kremlin, in the early nineties, was a mistake as other countries in the region have not interrupted such direct lines. And now, he said, Russian leaders are going to Sofia, Budapest and elsewhere, but seldom come to Romania.

He also said it was childish for Romania to think that the EU would support Romania’s moves for energy independence, as the main participants to the Nabucco pipeline project, which Romania is also part of, are already betting on Russian deals.