Ionut Chiru
A couple of weeks ago, my father got ill with an ear infection. After trying and failing to remedy this situation, he finally swallowed his pride and opted for a GP appointment. After waiting on the phone for about an hour, he finally got a consultation and received a text message giving him more information about his appointment. Upon closer inspection, he noted with some level of surprise that the doctor about to see him was a Romanian. Obviously, as he himself is also Romanian, he was able to quickly recognize the surname as one belonging to the country which he departed over 20 years ago. It is likely that this commonality between my dad and his general practitioner likely contributed to the appointment going better than usual, according to my father.
Why is this important?
The roots of the problem can be traced back to the fall of communist rule throughout Eastern Europe. Since the end of the Second World War, countries within Eastern Europe were subject to suppression by the Red Army, who used force to build communist governments beholden to the USSR. This formed the foundation of what would be referred to as the Eastern Bloc, which existed within the Soviet stranglehold for 40 years until the sudden collapse of communism during the late 1980s. Under the leadership of Nicolae Ceausescu, the country was the very stereotype of Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism, with concrete apartment blocks and a secret police (known as the Securitate) which kept order through mutual civilian suspicion. This was until December 1989, in which violent protests began throughout the country- originating in Timisoara and culminating in the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. This was aired live on TV on Christmas Day, much to the celebration of many across the country. Whilst the Romanian Revolution is unique in terms of its bloodshed, its effects are not. Across the whole of Eastern Europe, many people saw the disintegration of the Iron Curtain as an opportunity to emigrate to the West and find a better life.
This is largely in part due to the widespread poverty across Eastern Europe. Under the communist system, the Soviet Union had ensured that the countries would universally trade with it, thus keeping them in a state of docile economic dependency. In 1949, the USSR developed the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, referred to as COMECON, in order to counterbalance the economic aid provided by the US through the Marshall Plan. Under the provisions of this plan, the countries in Eastern Europe would trade exclusively with the USSR in return for oil and gas subsidies. Whilst the countries of the Warsaw Pact gained around 1 billion in subsidies by the 1980s, by 1985 they were paying above market price for oil (which had recently plummeted to just 20 dollars a barrel). This is significant because the COMECON system was now harming Eastern European economies through unfair trade. Not only were they dependent on the USSR as the main market for their goods, but they were also now paying a substantially greater fee for oil. As a result, when the USSR collapsed, the economies of Eastern Bloc countries were sent in a tailspin, with crime becoming rampant as these countries had lost their largest trading partner. For example, the crime rate in Romania in 2022 was 1.46 compared with a high of 3.59 people in 1992.
Within this widespread poverty, it is perhaps no wonder why so many people- particularly those who were university educated- decided to leave their country in order for better opportunities abroad. Therefore, it is no surprise that, within the first ten years of its existence as a democracy, Romania's population fell from its all-time high of 23.2 million people to 22.4 million people, marking a downward trend that would accelerate as the years went on. In summary then, the first reason for the brain drain that has occurred within Romania over the past 30 years is one shared by all Eastern European countries, namely the legacy of an unbalanced and dependant economic system which led to the migration of millions in search for better lives in more prosperous countries.
Yet, all countries in Eastern Europe had their economies collapse in 1991, all had massive crime rates, so then why has Romania seen the loss of approximately 3.8 million people since the fall of communism? This may have to do with another main reason, the effect of the 2008 Financial Crash and the entry into the EU, both of which built off each other in order to create an outflow of desperately needed professionals. After the entry of Romania into the EU in 2007, economic migrants were now able to leave the country in search for better jobs far more easily, something which would rear its ugly head just a year later
In an effort to rebuild its economy, Romania began to rely more heavily on speculative housing markets and foreign bank capital. When the housing bubble burst, Romania was scarred by the crisis, which resulted in the shrinking of its markets and exports, leading to a drop in domestic consumption. All of this resulted in a greater outflow of people for reasons that were similar to those who had left from 1990 to 2002. However, the key difference now was that, by joining the EU a year prior, it was far easier to emigrate, explaining the massive rise in immigration that followed. Once again, qualified professionals in sectors such as healthcare left the country in their millions, with approximately 1 million people immediately leaving the country for places like Spain, Italy and the UK in particular. This has resulted in around 22 percent of Romanian qualified professionals working in other EU member states in 2019, with around half of the country's doctors, like my local General Practitioner, working abroad.
So, in order to adequately explain the extent of brain drain within Romania, we have to understand that it is a combination of a couple of factors, both unique and tragically conventional for this region of Europe. The economic codependency brutally enforced by the USSR resulted in economic collapse across Eastern Europe and the Romanian dependency on foreign capital from the banking sector decimated its economy in 2008. Both of these reasons led to millions of people leaving the country in search of jobs, with many of those leaving taking their valuable qualifications with them. After entry into the EU, this process was made even easier through limited border checks, merely worsening the situation. Whilst around 2 million Romanians left the country from 1990-2002, the fact remains that they were only able to stay in their new abodes as a result of Romania’s entry into the EU, which allowed for the remaining 1 million migrants that left the country over the next decade to follow in their footsteps.
And this cycle is set to continue.
Recent studies have also found that 40 percent of young people aged 18-20 want to leave the country, citing corruption as the biggest reason why. Simply put, this is the next stage of the cycle. The more people leave, the poorer a country gets, so more people leave and so on and so forth. After decades of losing more than 10 percent of its population, Romania's newly qualified professionals see no reason in staying in the country and opt instead of immigration. The remaining 60 percent of young people who choose to stay are confronted by the usual legacies of brain drain, with the biggest issue being healthcare.
Romania has the fifth largest migrant population in the world, with estimates ranging between 3.4 and 3.8 million. However, my family members assured me that the figure is probably higher. This level of brain drain is, as we have seen, dependent on a number of tragic circumstances which have caused an eye watering amount of talented potential to leave a country that so desperately needed their help. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe brought all economies there to collapse, resulting in millions of educated individuals to search for higher wages abroad. Anyone who was left behind almost certainly left after the 2008 financial crash, which hit countries like Romania the hardest, with the recent EU ascension making this all the more easier. All of this led to an incredibly pessimistic forecast created by Romania's own government department which stated that the country will have lost 15 million people or 35 percent of its 1989 population, by 2050. In essence, unless something is changed, there will be far more Romanian GPs in our areas from now on.
Credit for the image goes to Investopedia.com