Mircea Munteanu

"Romania's Reactions to the CSCE Process. From Helsinki to Belgrade "

Romania's policy toward the CSCE was driven by the desire of the leadership in Bucharest to safeguard the maneuver room it had gained from the Soviet Union from 1964 onward. The CSCE process, as Bucharest understood it, provided for some much sought after security assurances against possible foreign intervention and offered guarantees of non-interference in internal affairs. Like the other communist leaders, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu did not consider parts of the CSCE process outside Basket I and Basket II as important. Human Rights agreements under Basket III were, in Bucharest's opinion, at best non-binding, and, at worse, interference in the internal affairs of member states. As domestic pressures to acquiesce to the agreements signed at Helsinki were building, East European governments, including Bucharest, grew increasingly strident in their disagreement over the soft power of the CSCE agreements. These tensions were apparent during the 1977 follow up meeting in Belgrade. As the Ceausescu regime began its fast deterioration into a personal dictatorship, any perceived outside interference, especially one that could present a challenge to the regime's hold on the population, were stridently opposed.