From "light Romanian", the fishy phrase that ex foreign minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu used to call the language spoken by the Moldovans, we have got straight to the "Moldovan language", as used by Adrian Cioroianu, Romania's foreign minister at present. Romanian diplomacy seems to be going from bad to worse. At first sight, two ministers who are historians by university education should need no explanations on why the existence of the "Moldovan language" mustn't be officially admitted. The experts in the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs thought that the Chishinau Communists would make use of a deadlock on the readmission and visa agreements between the EU and the Moldovan Republic and claim Romanian was deadlocking the Moldovans' right to travel freely. But the Chishinau Communists did something else: they pointed to the Hungarian Embassy in the Moldovan Republic, outlining the extraordinary relations with Budapest. The same experts assumed that a deadlock on some EU agreements would harm Romania's image, anyway stained because of the persisting threat that the safeguard clauses would be applied on Justice and agriculture. And the safeguard on the latter field has almost been applied. Given these, Romania agreed the EU should sign a treaty written in the "Moldovan language". As if wishing his soul to reach heaven, Romania's representative to the EU elaborated a statement, now lost in some obscure minute of the Council of Europe, claiming Romania does not admit the existence of the "Moldovan language". But a poor annex's importance doesn't resemble the importance of two agreements elaborated in the "Moldovan language". Poland and Bulgaria proved better skill in protecting their interests within the EU. The Bulgarians were bold enough to threaten to standstill the EU-Montenegro agreement unless they were allowed to use the Cyrillic alphabet in the denomination of the unique currency, the "evro". Poland was brave enough to threaten to standstill the Lisbon Treaty unless they agreed to postpone the European Council's decision. Poland has also been preventing the EU-Russia meting for more than a year now, as response to the Moscow embargo on Polish pork products. Therefore, dear comrades in the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this can be done! Far be it from me the idea that all the employees of the above-mentioned ministry are dunces or villains. But Romanian diplomacy has been diseased for about two years now. The strategies ceremonially announced in the yearly reunion of diplomats include a few conventional complex sentences on the Moldovan Republic: we are going to do this and that. In the meantime, the Bucharest-Chishinau relations have been growing worse and worse. As long as Voronin heads the Moldovan Republic, the ex militiaman will do some wire walking between Bucharest and Moscow on one single purpose: to keep his job and power. Romania's symbolical capital can't possibly be more deteriorated than it already is. Bucharest diplomats have failed to protect the Romanian language. The existence of other EU-Moldovan Republic agreements including a phrase such as the "Moldovan language" is an argument that doesn't work: at that time Romania could not protect its language, since it was not an EU member. But it could have done it now and it could have succeeded. The initiative to protect the Romanian language in Europe, now in the Parliament of Europe, is in vain. As long as Romania admitted an agreement written in "the Moldovan language", our foreign minister has got one single solution left: resign.

George DAMIAN