European Union – Defender of the Democratic Values or Aggressor of National Sovereignty? EU's Role in the Romanian Political Crisis of 2012 as Represented in the Romanian Media

The Romanian political crisis surrounding an attempted impeachment of President Traian Basescu by the parliamentary majority and the USL (social liberal union) government, brought to light a high level of disagreement among domestic political actors in what concerns the legitimacy of EU involvement in internal matters. After several political steps were taken by the ruling coalition to ease the impeachment – dismissing the Presidents of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, the Ombudsman and also restricting the attributions of the Constitutional Court – important members of the EU (Viviane Reading and Jose Manuel Barosso) expressed concern about the degree to which the rule of law is being upheld in the country. In response to the EU's critics, a nationalist discourse of the social liberal officials, underlining the need to respect internal politics, culminated in statements blaming the EU for hampering the will of the Romanian people. Strongly related to the crisis was a further politicization of the press, Romanian media not only representing and reporting the events, but being an active participant, positioned on one side or the other of the political conflict. Whereas pro-USL media emphasized national sovereignty, the press favorable to President Basescu called upon European principles and evoked the possibility of negative outcomes of their disrespect. In this paper we argue that EU's intervention triggered a deeper questioning about Romanian political elites' commitment to European values, their will to acknowledge advices of their European partners and to respect western democratic values. Using a content analysis including both quantitative and qualitative methods of two Romanian national newspapers with opposite alignments (Jurnalul National and Evenimentul Zilei), from June to September 2012, the author's main focus is to analyze the partial disappearance of a “permissive consensus” (Reif, 1993) among Romanian political elites, as represented in the media.