Foreign Affairs minister outlines the fight against corruption

Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, Petre Roman, has said that Romanians, who have passed through a unique process from totalitarianism to democracy, must be “painfully honest” if they want to gain credibility and accept that “corruption is still one of the unsolved problems of our society”. Mr Roman was speaking in Bucharest at the opening session of a regional conference of Central and Eastern European countries on fighting corruption. He pointed out to delegates, “the risks of corruption exceed the national level” stressing, “one of the most evil threats, corruption, resides as a plague on the international relations between countries, and endangers the sensitive domain of international funds for development”. The minister warned that one of the side effects of globalisation and the increasing use of technology is the disappearance of national borders claiming, “corruption often goes hand in hand with drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, and other serious criminal acts”. He was at pains to point out the efforts of Romania in this field, and its connection to numerous programmes and arrangements aimed at eradicating corruption. He spoke of dealing with the corruption issues, before attempting to control and eliminate criminality, by putting in place trained and ‘clean’ law-enforcement agencies, adopting clear rules and regulations for public servants and launching preventive activities with the support of ordinary citizens.