Out of the Darkness

Anti-corruption prosecutors have also charged a former transport minister with accepting a bribe and announced that they are investigating Deputy Prime Minister George Copos on suspicion of tax evasion.

According to Justice Minister Monica Luisa Macovei, the court system has been sufficiently reworked to handle politically explosive cases. In an interview, she said that trials are now randomly assigned to judges by a computer and that millions of dollars have been invested in computerized databases for police and courts. Hiring and promotion of judges and prosecutors, she said, will now be decided by open competition rather than cronyism.

One of Basescu's first acts upon taking office in 2004 was to demand a review of several major contracts, including a $2.5 billion deal signed in 2003 with U.S. construction giant Bechtel Corp. to build a 250-mile highway through Transylvania. The contract was awarded without public bidding, which brought complaints from critics in Romania and, perhaps more significantly, the European Union. Bechtel was not accused of wrongdoing.

In the interview, Basescu blamed "very bad" procurement laws, which he said are being replaced with new ones that require competitive public bids.

The new laws, he said, are "very European."

Battling Discrimination

One recent day in Targu Frumos, a small town in northeastern Romania, Ionel Pandele's eyes flashed with anger. Under E.U. pressure, the Romanian government has promised to end discrimination against the Roma, but Pandele, 22, said he and his family have seen little change. "I have no rights in this country," Pandele said. "Everyone says they will do things for the Roma, but I don't see anything happening."

Pandele was showing a reporter a videotape made on Aug. 19, 2003, when police officers wearing black uniforms and hoods forcibly evicted his family from the fruit and vegetable stall they had run for more than a decade. A half-dozen officers are seen swinging nightsticks over and over as they beat Pandele's brother, Cristinel, then drag both brothers into a police van.

"They beat us like it was a civil war," Ionel Pandele said.

The family said the eviction, the beatings and the failure of any officer to be punished in the 2 1/2 years since the incident were racism pure and simple.

Town officials said that the stall was closed as part of an effort to renovate the market and that the Pandeles had violated the terms of their lease. The Targu Frumos mayor, Gheorghe Tataru, said in an interview that authorities had acted properly. He blamed the situation on the Pandeles, and on the Roma in general. If the Roma say life is difficult, he said, "it's above all because they don't want to make it better for themselves."

Europe has about 7 million to 9 million Roma, with the largest concentration, 1 million to 2 million, in Romania, according to the World Bank. Discrimination -- and often violence -- against this minority is a centuries-old reality in Romania.

Macovei, the justice minister, said she used to handle discrimination cases for Roma clients when she worked as a human rights lawyer. Anti-discrimination laws have vastly improved recently, she said, but anti-Roma attitudes persist. "In the real life, the majority, the Romanians, do still treat the Roma people as different and not their equals," Macovei said.

The government has passed new hate crime laws and created a National Council for Combating Discrimination, which recently ruled that the Pandeles' eviction was due in part to ethnicity. Town officials are appealing that finding.

Timo Summa, a European Commission official who oversees E.U. enlargement issues, said that despite advances in anti-discrimination laws, "the theory and the practice don't meet every time" in Romania. Discrimination against the Roma is decreasing, he said, but remains a concern: "What is needed is a change of culture, a change of mind-set. There is no way to do it overnight."

Pierre Moscovici, the European Parliament's special observer for Romania, said European officials were encouraged by the country's overall progress and want evidence that the country's course toward modernization is irreversible. "Poland was not perfect, Lithuania was not perfect," he said, naming two of the 2004 entrants. "Romania won't be perfect. In the end, we will have to take a political decision, which will be, 'Are they good enough?' "

Washingtonpost.com's Travis Fox in Golaiesti and special correspondent Alexandra Topping in London contributed to this report.