Balkan Cabaret, not an Eastern European Confederation

It is known that President Iohannis would like a high European or NATO dignity, primarily to have immunity from the prosecutors who have suspended a criminal case against his wife, Carmen, for the fraudulent purchase of a property with false documents. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu himself recently announced that he would be proud for a Romanian to occupy a high position in a European structure. He didn’t say a word about NATO. Mark Rutte is hated in Eastern Europe for his abusive way of imposing constraints on governments, for his harsh criticism of leaders, and for the way he dictated, when he was prime minister, a series of commercial associations of the Romanian state with private entities from the Netherlands. He downright humiliated Viktor Orban. He also said that, if it were up to him, he would take Hungary out of the European Union.

The flying Dutchman’s relations with Ankara were always colder. It was only after his departure as prime minister that the military exchange agreements between Turkey and the Netherlands were unblocked. Obviously, after the Parliament of the Republic of Turkey ratified Sweden’s request for NATO entry, Rutte pretended to encourage Erdogan to be the mediator of the truce between Russia and Ukraine. The escape from the press could not be done from Bucharest because the public appearance of the information makes the malicious candidate back down. The media game appears to be played by a number of its allies. It is known that when you want to kill a discrete competition, you throw the names of the competitors into the arena. It is even possible that high-ranking American sources have thus taken Iohannis out of the game. Journalist Jennifer Jacobs, who first leaked the information, was a favourite of Donald Trump. Who knows if his staff did it to the owner of the cap, received as a gift from the White House, at a time when Iohannis was agreeing to any memorandum requested by Washington?

The relationship between Viktor Orban and Klaus Iohannis was never known. If the Hungarian leader remained a constant critic of the Eurocrats, the one from Bucharest, a faithful executor of the orders from Brussels, It is hard to believe that there was a secret understanding between the two. Just maybe Orban’s revenge. As for a Romanian-Hungarian confederation, about which I have written countless times, it is out of the question in the current context of the divergent opinions of the leaders from Bucharest and Budapest regarding the common Euro-Atlantic future. Diplomatic discussions could take shape only if a sovereignist candidate with the same doctrinal orientation as Orban’s wins the autumn presidential elections in Romania. Basically, the countries of Eastern Europe united their destinies only when a great empire threatened their independence, which is not happening now, even if Russia is seen as a great aggressor.

The politics of Ankara are different from the conformist ones of Bucharest, but not too divergent from those of Budapest. It is known that Erdogan is looking for collaboration bridges with Viktor Orban in order to jointly realise some infrastructure networks. Klaus Iohannis is too uptight to negotiate something with somewhat infrequent leaders. We believe that Rutte’s entourage dropped the information to remove from the game the eternal candidate for everything and nothing, or even that of the hat-giver, Donald Trump, who always appreciated Rutte because he did everything America wanted in Europe, the Netherlands being a US proxy.

Iohannis – Rutte’s doorstep

“Romania has notified other NATO members that it intends to nominate its president, Klaus Iohannis, as a candidate for NATO Secretary General. It will complicate the other allies’ effort to install Mark Rutte as the next secretary general,” Jennifer Jacobs wrote on the X network, citing two other Bloomberg journalists, Natalia Drozdiak and Peter Martin.

By Marius Ghilezan