History of Romania - European Union Membership

European Union Membership

(2004–present)

Presidential and parliamentary elections took place again on November 28, 2004. No political party was able to secure a viable parliamentary majority and opposition parties alike that the PSD had committed large-scale electoral fraud. There was no winner in the first round of the presidential elections. The joint PNL-PD candidate, Traian Băsescu, won the second round on December 12, 2004 with 51% of the vote and thus became the third post-revolutionary president of Romania.

The PNL leader, Călin Popescu Tăriceanu was assigned the difficult task of building a coalition government without including the PSD. In December 2004, the new coalition government (PD, PNL, PUR Romanian Humanist Party - which eventually changed its name to Romanian Conservative Party and UDMR), was sworn in under Prime Minister Tăriceanu.

Post–Cold War Romania developed closer ties with Western Europe, eventually joining NATO in 2004. The country applied in June 1993 for membership in the European Union (EU). It became an Associated State of the EU in 1995, an Acceding Country in 2004, and a member on January 1, 2007.

Following the free travel agreement and politic of the post–Cold War period, as well as hardship of the life in the post 1990s economic depression, Romania has an increasingly large diaspora. The main emigration targets are Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, UK, Canada and the USA.

Romania joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004, and the European Union, alongside Bulgaria, on January 1, 2007.

In April 2008, Bucharest hosted the NATO summit.

In January 2012, Romania started the first large national protests since '89, motivated by the global economical crisis of that time and as an answer to the crisis situations and unrest in Europe of 2000s.