Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tomis02 | Hacker News Reader

> poorly-founded claims that the Romanian external border was leaky

I'm not sure what you are talking about. There have been several incidents regarding smuggling across the Romanian border with Ukraine/Moldavia/Black Sea, plus endemic corruption (see the Recorder documentary).

I would not trust today's Romania to secure Europe's borders.

View on HN

The Black Sea migration route is nowhere close to the Mediterranean routes. Like 200 incidents in the Black Sea vs 300k+ in the Mediterranean in 2022, with Italy, Greece and Spain being principal entry points.

Not talking about migration specifically. For example, there was an incident in 2019 when the Black Sea border surveillance system went down several times, and at the same time drug shipments were discovered on the sea shore.

Migrants routes may be used as a political justification but there have been a bunch of border incidents suggesting Romania does not in fact meet the criteria for Schengen.

Not sure what your point is, there is drug smuggling in pretty much any country in the world (except maybe North Korea), this can not be 100% stopped. By now it is common knowledge that western european ports are the drug hubs of the EU[1].

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/main-cocaine-ro...

Disclaimer: I’m romanian.

The whole border surveillance system went down in order for drug shipments (and who knows what else) to go through. The problem is obvious, you just need to acknowledge it. There's a difference between 1) insufficient border protection and 2) corrupt border security.

As far as corruption, Romania’s CPI is virtually identical to Hungary’s.

You won’t be able to make a good argument using statistics about corruption and migration. European politicians have given up on that, too. Now it’s subjective stuff like “they don’t treat our businesses well.”

> Others are also corrupt, what's the problem if we add one more corrupt country to the equation?

That's a bold strategy, let's see if pays off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com