14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
ROMANIA
A documentary has helped turn Romania into a na-
tion of whistleblowers, said Andreea Pietrosel. The
Oscar- nominated film Collective follows the inves-
tigation into the 2015 fire at Bucharest’s Colectiv
nightclub, in which 64 people died and scores more
were injured. It’s a story, director Alexander Nanau
says, of “how the state covers its incompetence
through lies and manipulation.” The club’s own-
ers had used a flammable foam to soundproof the
venue and had failed to install a sprinkler system
or to provide adequate exits. The owners and the
bureaucrats who turned a blind eye to these safety
violations were prosecuted. But the film exposes a
much deeper rot. Burn victims who were taken toBucharest hospitals began dying of infections, and
it was soon revealed that disinfectant sold to the
facilities had been massively watered down. The
entire hospital system was corrupt, whistleblower
Camelia Roiu—an anesthesiologist—told the inves-
tigators. Everyone it hired, including doctors and
nurses, had paid bribes to get in. Suppliers bribed
clerks to accept shoddy medical supplies, and ad-
ministrators bribed government inspectors to say
nothing. Since the film came out, “the number of
whistleblowers going to the press has exploded.”
Most of them, like Roiu, are women. Romanians
are learning to denounce the corruption embedded
in our society—the first step toward eradicating it.France is taking baby steps toward affirmative ac-
tion, said Philippe Rioux. During the Yellow Vest
protests of 2019—when working-class French
railed against inequality and the arrogance of
the cultural, business, and administrative elite—
President Emmanuel Macron declared that our
meritocracy was indeed failing. It was no longer
easy for someone from a family of workers or
farmers, he said, to rise to the top levels of the civil
service. Vowing change, Macron set up a task force
and last year accepted its recommendation that he
scrap the prestigious École Nationale d’Ad min i stra-
tion (ENA), which churns out senior civil servants,and replace it with a new school that would wel-
come a broader group of students. But this week,
Macron rewrote the plan. A new “talent prepara-
tion” program will now award stipends to 1,
high school and college students who are consid-
ered high- office material. Five to 10 spots at each
of the five top universities, including the ENA, will
be reserved for these diversity picks. This gesture
toward affirmative action is a sop to the left wing
of Macron’s ostensibly centrist Republic on the
Move party, which has lurched to the right since his
2017 election. But it’s far from clear if the program
will calm the discord in his party, or the nation.GettyFor one day last week, the independent
media in Poland fell silent, said Gabriele
Lesser in Die Tageszeitung (Germany).
Newspapers ran front pages emblazoned
with the headline “Media Without
Choice.” TV networks went off air.
Radio stations broadcast one phrase
on repeat: “This is where your favorite
program should be.” That mass blackout
was a protest against a plan by the na-
tionalist government to slap a tax of up
to 15 percent on advertising income. The
ruling Law and Justice party says this
“solidarity fee” will raise money for the
health-care and culture sectors—both hit hard by the pandemic—
but the levy is clearly intended to bankrupt what little private
media remains in the increasingly authoritarian country. State-
owned outlets won’t be hurt, because they are heavily subsidized
and benefit from generous ad buys by state-owned enterprises.
No, it’s the independent press, the voices that criticize the govern-
ment and expose corruption, that will be forced to fold. All that
will be left is a media that churns out “downright embarrassing”
propaganda. On the day of the blackout, one state- allied news-
paper had a front page hailing Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw
Kaczynski as “Man of the Year.”The Polish government “sees a free and open society as its
enemy,” said Piotr Stasinski in Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland). Law
and Justice has systematically dismantled the independent judi-
ciary, stacking the constitutional tribune with loyalists and bar-
ring judges from criticizing its legal reforms. It has “corrupted
our economy” and turned our education system into “a carica-ture of nationalist ideology and unreflec-
tive Catholic dogma.” It has made a
farce of state TV, which displayed a chy-
ron reading “Leftist fascism is destroying
Poland” during ostensibly neutral cover-
age of recent demonstrations against an
abortion ban. Kaczynski is following the
anti-media “slicing the salami” tactics
of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor
Orban, said Jerzy Baczynski in Polityka
(Poland). First, “sources of income are
whittled away” through taxes or state
policy, then onerous legal requirements
are imposed, then “fines are levied” for
tiny infractions of these arcane legal procedures, and finally the
pesky news outlet goes out of business. It’s an effective strategy:
Hungary’s last independent radio station, Klubradio, had its op-
erating license revoked last week because, on one day, it played
slightly less Hungarian music than was required by law.Why isn’t the European Union doing something about this demo-
cratic backsliding? asked Don Murray in CBC.ca ( Canada).
When Poland and Hungary—both former Communist countries—
joined the bloc in 2004, they pledged to uphold democracy and
the rule of law, and in return won access to tens of billions of
dollars in EU funds. “The EU has tried to fight back.” But by the
time EU courts ruled that Polish and Hungarian judicial inter-
ference was illegal, the new state-approved judges were already
ensconced. Brussels seems to be hoping that voters will eventually
boot out their authoritarian leaders. Until they do, “the work of
the ‘moral revolution’ in Poland and of ‘illiberal democracy’ in
Hungary will go on.”Learning
to demand
integrity
Andreea Pietrosel
RFI.ro
FRANCE
A headline warning of ‘Media Without Choice’Can our
meritocracy
be revived?
Philippe Rioux
La Dépêche
Poland: Slowly strangling the free press