UK-Romanian Relations

Debate between John Grogan and Stephen Pound

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is a fellow member of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. He made a typically extensive and interesting speech.

There are three reasons why I am delighted to take part in the debate, Mr Betts. The first is the fact that you, a fellow Yorkshireman, are in the Chair. The second is that today we are celebrating a great victory by an England squad with no fewer than seven Yorkshire-born members.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

And a Londoner scored both goals.

[John Grogan]

That is a minor detail, but yes.

The third reason is that the debate was secured by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who led our delegation to Romania with great diplomacy and distinction. It was a good group—we had two Scottish nationalists, one Labour Member and one Conservative Member. We were not quite representative of the nation, but he led us very ably and I learned a great deal from the visit.

I will not repeat the hon. Gentleman’s remarks; instead, I will try to choose five reasons to be cheerful about Romania, building on what he said. The first is democracy. We stood on the balcony of the Interior Ministry one afternoon and looked out at the same view that Ceauşescu, the dictator, had less than 30 years ago, in 1989. How well Romanian democracy has developed in that time. My first encounter with Romania was a few years ago, when I was not an MP. I looked at Leeds civic hall on a Sunday morning and saw a massive queue of people. I thought, “What are they doing?” I asked some of them, and they were Romanians who wanted to vote. Some of them had been standing there for three or four hours. Romania generally has been a success in that period. While we were there, a new political party was formed. There is a lot of intense political debate—I will come back to that—and women are very well represented in Parliament. We met some very bright young people who no doubt have great political futures.

The second reason to be cheerful about Romania is its economy, which the hon. Gentleman touched on. The Romanian economy is racing ahead. The growth rate has touched 8%, and I think it will be more than 4% this year. Sectors such as motor vehicles, electrical goods and IT all have great futures, and Romania gets an awful lot of foreign investment. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the English. As one person we met suggested, the development of English has definitely happened in this generation. There are obviously many long-standing French links in Romania, but there has been an adjustment in the past generation. We had extensive debates with people from the British Council—youngsters and young adults—and they had excellent English. One of the older students suggested that that was because Romania has always had a tradition of not dubbing foreign films but subtitling them, and that that made some difference to the learning of English, even in communist times. The Romanian economy is definitely a success story, and the United Kingdom needs a slice of it.

The hon. Gentleman referred to foreign policy. Romania has a long tradition of having an independent foreign policy—that was the case even under the Soviet Union. Reference was made to our memorable dinner at a restored synagogue. Romania has a role to play in the middle east. I learned that not only is there a Palestinian population in Bucharest, but there are long-standing links with the state of Israel. Many Jewish citizens of Romania went to Israel—in fact, Ceauşescu even demanded payments from Israel—in the period of communism. There is still a strong, small Jewish community there, and that certainly brought home to me the need continually to fight anti-Semitism wherever we are.

We look forward to Romania taking the chair of the Council of Ministers. Without prolonging references to the European debate, I envisage that if by that stage the United Kingdom were suggesting that we might stay in the customs union or even the single market, the Romanian diplomats would find a way of bringing that about. They are certainly preparing well for their period in office—they were keen to tell us about the number of people they have in Brussels for that—and they will have many options for us, should we need them.

The hon. Gentleman, who mentioned tourism, spoke about the Black sea in the important context of security, but it is also important for tourism. Many cruise ships and holidaymakers now go to the Black sea. Romania is now the sixth largest producer of wine in Europe, and we had a little Romanian wine—just half a glass.

A final reason to be cheerful: today we are all thinking about sport. Sadly, Romanian football is not as good as it used to be. However, Mr Speaker is always keen to mention the No. 1 men’s tennis player, and of course Simona Halep, the No. 1 women’s tennis player, deserves a mention, having recently won the French open.

Finally, it would be remiss for the debate to go by without mentioning corruption in Romania. It was raised at many of our meetings, and not many of the politicians were comfortable speaking about it. However, I want to do so, not least because their current Government are a sister party of the Labour party. Incidentally, corruption affects all Romanian political parties. Without going into all the details of Romanian internal politics, the position of Ms Kövesi, the state prosecutor, is under threat, and the President must rule on her future soon.

It is not good enough just to talk, as some Romanian politicians do, about the deep state and how everyone is against them. Corruption must be dealt with. It is important for all the existing and new political parties that Romanian politicians of all parties confront the issue. The new, young generation of Romanian politicians, many of whom we were privileged to meet, must make it clear that even if such ways of operation happened in the past, they will not happen in the future.