Romania has entered a period of governmental uncertainty, marked by parliamentary fragmentation, the prospect of minority rule and growing pressure on the mainstream parties. To what extent could prolonged political instability affect Bucharest’s ability to maintain its pro-European orientation?

From my perspective, Romania’s current political uncertainty should be taken seriously, but I would distinguish between the risks created by domestic instability and the possibility of a fundamental reversal of the country’s strategic orientation.

Romania’s pro-European and Euro-Atlantic positioning is considerably more deeply rooted than the current political configuration might suggest. Membership of the European Union and NATO has become embedded in Romania’s institutional architecture, security calculations and economic interests. Therefore, I would not expect political fragmentation or the prospect of minority government, in themselves, to lead to a rapid abandonment of Romania’s pro-European orientation or its support for Ukraine.

The greater danger is that prolonged instability could gradually weaken the country’s capacity to act consistently and credibly.

The first problem is one of political bandwidth and decision-making capacity. A government that depends on fragile parliamentary arrangements is likely to devote much of its energy to maintaining its domestic coalition, negotiating parliamentary support and managing electoral pressures. Foreign and security policy may consequently become more reactive and less strategic. This matters particularly for Romania because its geopolitical importance has increased considerably since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Romania is no longer simply a southeastern EU member state; it has become an important pillar of NATO’s eastern flank and a key actor in the Black Sea region. That role requires continuity, long-term planning and the ability to make difficult decisions even when they are domestically unpopular.

A second risk concerns political competition and the normalization of Eurosceptic or sovereigntist narratives. Mainstream parties are increasingly under pressure from forces that challenge aspects of European integration, criticize military and financial assistance to Ukraine, or frame Romania’s international commitments as constraints on national sovereignty. Even when such forces do not control government, mainstream parties may feel compelled to adopt some of their rhetoric. This can produce ambiguity rather than an explicit geopolitical realignment. In my view, that is perhaps the more realistic danger: not Romania suddenly becoming anti-European, but its political class becoming progressively less willing to articulate clearly why European and Euro-Atlantic commitments serve Romania’s national interest.

Ukraine is particularly sensitive in this respect. Continued Romanian support is strategically important, but it also requires sustained political communication. The government needs to explain that supporting Ukraine is not simply an act of solidarity but also a means of protecting Romania’s own security environment. A Russian victory or a substantial weakening of Ukraine would fundamentally alter the strategic balance in the Black Sea and expose Romania to a much more difficult security environment.

Finally, instability could affect Romania’s credibility among its European and NATO partners. Romania possesses significant strategic assets (its geographical position, military infrastructure, energy potential and access to the Black Sea), but influence depends not only on capabilities but also on predictability. If domestic political instability produces inconsistent positions or delays important decisions, Bucharest risks becoming less influential precisely at the moment when its strategic importance is increasing.

I would therefore describe the situation as one of serious vulnerability rather than imminent strategic reversal. Romania’s fundamental orientation is likely to remain pro-European and pro-Atlantic. The real challenge is whether its political institutions can preserve strategic coherence while navigating fragmentation, electoral pressures and growing populist competition. In the present geopolitical context, political stability is itself becoming an element of national security.

The recent NATO Ankara Summit placed renewed emphasis on greater European responsibility, stronger defence-industrial capacity and the Alliance’s ability to deploy and sustain forces across all domains. What distinctive contribution should NATO’s eastern and south-eastern members make to translating these commitments into credible deterrence, while preserving transatlantic cohesion?

From my perspective, NATO’s eastern and south-eastern members have a particularly important role to play because they are not simply recipients of Allied security guarantees; they are increasingly frontline contributors to deterrence.

The strategic environment created by Russia’s war against Ukraine has fundamentally changed the security calculations of countries such as Poland, Romania, the Baltic states and other members of NATO’s eastern flank. Their distinctive contribution should therefore be to transform geographical exposure into concrete military capabilities, infrastructure, resilience and regional cooperation, while ensuring that these efforts remain fully embedded within the Alliance.

First, these countries need to continue investing in credible national defence capabilities. The objective should not simply be to meet a numerical spending target, but to develop forces that can operate effectively within NATO’s integrated command structure and contribute to collective defence from the outset of a crisis. This means strengthening air and missile defence, long-range fires, drones and counter-drone capabilities, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber defence, electronic warfare and logistical support. For Romania in particular, the Black Sea dimension makes maritime surveillance, coastal defence, air defence and the protection of critical infrastructure especially important.

Second, eastern and south-eastern members can make a distinctive contribution by developing the military mobility and logistical architecture that allows NATO forces to move rapidly across the region. Deterrence is credible only if the Alliance can reinforce threatened areas quickly and sustain those forces over time. Roads, railways, bridges, ports, airfields, fuel infrastructure and military logistics therefore become strategic assets. Romania’s geographical position is particularly significant in this respect. It can function as a logistical and operational hub connecting Central Europe, the Black Sea and the wider south-eastern flank. The development of the so-called military mobility corridors should therefore be regarded as a security priority rather than simply an infrastructure policy.

Third, I believe these countries should intensify regional defence cooperation. No individual eastern or south-eastern member can address all the emerging security challenges alone. Cooperation in air defence, maritime surveillance, procurement, ammunition production, military training and intelligence-sharing can generate economies of scale while increasing interoperability. The experience of the war in Ukraine demonstrates the value of regional networks capable of responding quickly and adapting to rapidly changing technological and operational conditions.

This brings me to the question of European defence-industrial capacity. Eastern and south-eastern NATO members should not merely purchase defence equipment from elsewhere; they should increasingly become producers and co-producers within a genuinely European defence-industrial ecosystem. Romania, for example, has an opportunity to expand its industrial base and participate more actively in European joint procurement and production programmes. This would strengthen both national resilience and the wider European contribution to NATO.

At the same time, we should understand that European strategic responsibility must not become synonymous with strategic separation from the United States. The purpose should be burden-sharing, not decoupling. Transatlantic cohesion remains indispensable, particularly in areas where American capabilities continue to be difficult to replace.

Ultimately, the eastern and south-eastern members can contribute something essential: geographical proximity transformed into operational credibility. By combining stronger national forces, resilient infrastructure, regional cooperation and defence-industrial capacity, they can help turn NATO’s political commitments into a deterrence posture that is visible, sustainable and convincing. This would strengthen the transatlantic bond.

The Western Balkans continue to face several interconnected sources of instability, from the unresolved relationship between Belgrade and Pristina to institutional fragility in Bosnia and Herzegovina, democratic backsliding and external interference. Which of these challenges currently presents the greatest strategic risk, and where is the potential for escalation most frequently underestimated?

The Western Balkans remain a region where several apparently separate crises are actually interconnected. The most serious strategic risk is therefore not necessarily one isolated dispute, but the possibility that political and institutional fragility could interact with unresolved territorial questions and external interference, producing a crisis that becomes difficult to contain. If I had to identify one particularly dangerous point, however, I would point to the relationship between Belgrade and Pristina, while emphasizing that Bosnia and Herzegovina represents a different but equally important form of vulnerability.

The Kosovo-Serbia relationship remains the most obvious potential trigger for escalation because the fundamental political disagreement has not been resolved and because both sides continue to operate within a highly securitized environment. The danger is not necessarily that either Belgrade or Pristina deliberately seeks a major armed confrontation. Rather, escalation could result from a local incident, a miscalculation or an attempt by political actors to respond to domestic pressures through nationalist mobilization. The events of recent years have demonstrated how quickly tensions can move from political confrontation to a security crisis. In such circumstances, even a relatively limited incident can acquire a much broader symbolic and geopolitical significance.

What I think is frequently underestimated, however, is the cumulative effect of institutional erosion and democratic backsliding. Western Balkan instability is often assessed through the lens of dramatic events (protests, elections, ethnic tensions or security incidents), while less attention is paid to the gradual weakening of institutions, media pluralism, judicial independence and public trust. These processes create an environment in which political elites can increasingly mobilize identity-based narratives and present compromise as betrayal. Over time, this reduces the political space for negotiated solutions.

Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates this problem particularly well. The country’s institutional architecture is extraordinarily complex, and political confrontation can easily become intertwined with questions of identity, constitutional authority and competing interpretations of statehood. I would be particularly concerned about the possibility that prolonged institutional paralysis could gradually normalize the idea that the state itself is incapable of functioning effectively. This would not necessarily produce immediate violence, but it could create the conditions in which a future crisis becomes much harder to manage.

A further element that should not be underestimated is external interference. Russia remains an important actor, but I would avoid interpreting every regional problem simply through the prism of Russian influence. Moscow can exploit existing divisions, but it did not create all of them. Other external actors, including China, Turkey and various Gulf states, also have economic, political or cultural interests in the region. The central issue is therefore the vulnerability of local political systems to external influence rather than the presence of one particular foreign power.

The European Union and NATO consequently have an important preventive role. The EU enlargement process remains one of the most powerful instruments available for encouraging institutional reform and political compromise, but its credibility depends on maintaining a realistic and consistent perspective on enlargement. At the same time, NATO’s presence, particularly through KFOR in Kosovo, remains essential for preventing local instability from becoming a wider security crisis.

I would therefore describe the principal danger as the normalization of instability. The greatest strategic risk is not necessarily an imminent large-scale conflict, but the gradual accumulation of unresolved disputes, institutional weakness, nationalist rhetoric and external interference. The potential for escalation is most underestimated precisely when these elements appear manageable individually. The Western Balkans demonstrate that strategic crises often emerge not from a single dramatic development, but from the interaction of several vulnerabilities that have been allowed to persist for too long.

Recent European initiatives have sought to restore momentum to enlargement while offering the region more immediate economic and security integration. How can the European Union and NATO make their engagement more credible and politically effective without encouraging dependency, rewarding illiberal practices or weakening the principle that lasting reform must be locally owned?

The central challenge for the European Union and NATO in the Western Balkans is to combine credible engagement with credible conditionality. The region needs to feel that European integration and Euro-Atlantic security are real political projects rather than distant promises, but this cannot come at the expense of reform, democratic standards or local responsibility. The objective should therefore not be to manage the Western Balkans indefinitely from Brussels or from NATO headquarters, but to create incentives and institutional conditions under which local actors have both the capacity and the political motivation to manage their own future.

For the European Union, the most important issue is credibility of the enlargement perspective. The countries of the Western Balkans need to see a clear relationship between reforms and tangible benefits. The traditional model (reform first, benefits much later), has increasingly lost its mobilizing power. I therefore support a gradual integration approach in which countries that demonstrate concrete progress can obtain access to selected elements of the single market, European programmes, infrastructure investment and other EU policies before full membership. But this should be strictly conditional. Benefits should be reversible when governments deliberately undermine democratic institutions, the rule of law or fundamental rights.

This is particularly important because economic integration without institutional reform can reinforce dependency rather than modernization. European investment should strengthen local productive capacity, connectivity and resilience rather than simply create opportunities for political elites or external companies. EU assistance should therefore be accompanied by transparent procurement, independent monitoring and measurable institutional benchmarks. In this respect, local ownership is not an obstacle to European engagement; it is its essential condition.

I would also argue that the EU needs to communicate much more effectively with citizens. Enlargement is too often presented as a technical process involving chapters, benchmarks and conditionality. For ordinary citizens, however, the relevant questions are much more concrete: jobs, mobility, infrastructure, education, security and the quality of public institutions. The EU should demonstrate more visibly how European integration improves everyday life while also making clear that democratic standards are not negotiable.

NATO faces a somewhat different challenge. Its principal contribution should be to provide credible security without creating permanent external dependence. The presence of NATO forces and missions can prevent escalation and reassure vulnerable societies, but the long-term objective should be the development of local defence capabilities, professional armed forces and regional security cooperation. NATO should therefore continue training, capacity-building and interoperability programmes while encouraging regional states to assume progressively greater responsibility for their own security.

At the same time, the EU and NATO need to coordinate much more closely. Economic resilience, democratic resilience and military security are increasingly interconnected. External interference can exploit corruption, social polarization, weak institutions and economic dependency just as effectively as military vulnerabilities. A coherent Western strategy should therefore address these dimensions together.

Finally, I believe that local ownership must mean more than simply consulting local governments. It should involve civil society, municipalities, independent media, universities, business communities and citizens. Sustainable reform cannot be imposed from outside because political institutions become resilient only when domestic actors perceive them as legitimate and useful.

I would therefore favour a model of conditional integration rather than indefinite conditionality: provide tangible benefits early, but make them dependent on demonstrable progress; strengthen local capacities rather than replacing them; and make European and Euro-Atlantic engagement sufficiently visible to compete with alternative external influences. The Western Balkans should not be treated as a perpetual object of European policy. They should be treated as future participants in shaping the European security and political order.