This year Romanians will experience an unprecedented four elections: local, European, presidential and parliamentary. The ruling mainstream parties have already demonstrated their joint strategy to curb the rise of populist and extremist parties. How the society will vote in this marathon of democracy remains unknown.

Romania has never had four rounds of elections in a single year. However, 2024 brings them all: European, local, presidential and parliamentary. Over the past year, there have been discussions about the possibility of merging some of them, especially European and local elections. Yet, until recently, the political calculations within the governing coalition did not favour this option as a means of simplifying the electoral calendar.

Serbian film director Vladimir Perišić seems perfectly content belonging to a tradition of cinema that operates outside of the mainstream. There are no big budgets or huge audiences. But he is okay with that and can still find a cult audience across Europe that appreciates his work. “I like to work with small crews and non-actors and being in this marginal position allows me to have this artistic freedom,” he admits.

Vladimir Perišić is not intentionally trying to sound like Vladimir Putin. But the Serbian director is deadly serious when he says that “the break-up of Yugoslavia was a huge historical mistake.” He claims the six ex-Yugoslav republics – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia (including the regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina) – are today “all obsessed with their national histories, most of which are a total fantasy”.

Recent geopolitical developments have resulted in renewed discussions on the enlargement of the European Union – including in the Western Balkans. Many factors will determine how these talks go in 2024 but some local actors may have significant input. Through its experience, Romania can be one of these actors and play a unique role in this process.

The new geopolitical context stemming from Russia’s ongoing brutal war on European soil has had profound effects on the geopolitical dynamics of the European Union’s enlargement. After many years of inertia and stagnation, enlargement seems to be back at the top of the EU agenda. The geopolitical decision made by the European Council in June 2022 to grant Ukraine and Moldova candidate status was followed by the (re-)opening of previously stagnating accession negotiations with the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania and various ex-Yugoslav states).

The beginning of Moldova’s official accession negotiations with the EU will mark a pivotal moment in the country’s history. Despite this, full membership is still not an inevitability. Brussels must subsequently help Moldova to reform key areas of its society throughout the process.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a large portion of Ukraine’s Roma population escaped as refugees alongside their fellow Ukrainians. However, they were not always met with open arms and many faced additional challenges and discrimination.

In the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the subsequent hardships of Ukraine’s Roma population, both as refugees and internally displaced people, has drawn the world’s attention to the double standards refugee host countries hold even in the face of danger and destruction. It is estimated that of the approximate 400,000 Roma living in Ukraine (this rough figure is due to migration and lack of Roma documentation), 25 per cent have fled since the beginning of Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Yet, unlike non-Roma Ukrainians, who have generally felt welcomed when seeking refuge in Ukraine’s neighbouring Eastern European countries, Roma Ukrainians have oftentimes faced prejudice and distrust. This is similar to that which they face in their homeland.

As Ukraine has been trying to re-route its crucial wheat and corn exports via its ports on the Danube river, Russia has begun targeting them. Their proximity to Romania creates a significant risk to the local residents, who feel their concerns remain unaddressed. Drones or fragment of drones have already crashed on this NATO country’s territory, with little recourse.

“The sky was lighting up from the tracer ammunition fired by the Ukrainians and you could see the outline of the drones. The last one crashed at 00:20 – I can show you on my surveillance cameras how loud the bang was. And I told myself: this is one hundred per cent in Romania,” recalls Neculae Marian, a resident of the city of Tulcea who owns a house in the village of Plauru. Following multiple crashes of Russian drones on Romanian territory around the settlement, confidence is low and frustrations towards the country’s decision-makers are at a high. Neculae becomes visibly irate when talking about the government’s response and argues that the authorities have been consistently disingenuous about the risks faced by the local population.

The story of violent clashes that broke out in Sibiu in Romania during late December 1989 is one that many have forgotten since the revolution and regime change. Tudor Giurgiu’s latest film Libertate revisits that turbulent event in Romania. The film not only acts as a reminder of the ruthless terror and chaos of the time but also as a chance for Romanians to reassess their own history.

When Nicolae Ceaușescu's brutal regime collapsed in Romania 34 years ago, Tudor Giurgiu was 18 years old, living in his home city of Cluj-Napoca, in central Transylvania. “For many days and weeks, the country was directionless,” the 51-year-old Romanian film director explains from central Sarajevo, Bosnia, where he is showcasing his latest film Libertate. “People were not talking normally, they were going nuts and there was a lot of shouting, paranoia, and violence.”

Over the past two months, Romania has been a victim of the Russian army's clumsiness. Several Shahed drones have crashed in the hamlet of Plauru, on NATO territory. Local residents now live in const ant fear of future attacks.

With the start of Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, one of the main problems on the mind of every European became the insecurity and instability around energy supply. In a race to diversify their sources of supply, countries who are dependent on Russian energy began to explore options that had been previously avoided. As European countries struggle to cut ties with their unstable Eastern partner, Romania is increasingly seen as a future European energy hub.

Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine in 2022 triggered a reshaping of the entire security architecture in the Black Sea region and the whole of Europe. How does the expert community perceive the changes to regional security? What are the lessons learned for the international and regional actors? What could be done to restore and maintain security in the Black Sea region?

Romania is not the first country people usually think of when it comes to slavery. Despite this, the country possesses an almost unknown history of Roma slavery that occurred over five centuries. The Way of the Land is a podcast that shows how this hidden history bleeds into the present discriminations against the Roma community.

In the small room of Romania’s National Theatre, the public frets in their seats, waiting for the play to start. They came to see a one-woman show written, directed and staged by Alina Șerban. She is the first Roma woman to ever direct a play for the National Theatre in Bucharest. Tonight, she plays in The Best Child in the World, a play about her life. The only poster displayed remains inside the theatre, where only the spectators can see it. It features Șerban wearing a traditional Roma dress. The curly haired woman stands back to back with a grotesque figure, a symbol of the most crushing insult against Roma, the crow. Șerban smiles.

In the summer of 1990, I found myself sitting on the platform of Wien Sudbahnhof waiting for a train to Bucharest and dreaming of waltzing down the River Danube. In the dream, my partner and I spiralled through rooms that had hosted the secessionist salons of Mitteleuropa. We landed on the couch of Freud’s 20th century, before spilling onto the streets and the opening scenes of The Third Man.

This is where my imagination takes me: Holly Martins has arrived in a burnt-out city. There are traps and ambiguities for a visitor from the New World; there are harsh and shifting choices forced on refugees. The lush romance of the Danube waltz lingers in the background, but my appetite for suspense has me gripped. In Vienna at the end of the 20th century, I searched in vain for the slippery labyrinths containing an enigma in the shape of a moon-faced man. I never found him, so I took the train to Bucharest.