Poland vs. Romania as seen by the US

Recently, the news delivered by the American president, Donald Trump, who said US would grant Poland the access to the Visa Waiver program, sent a bitter message to Romania. This country is also waiting for too long to enter the Visa Waiver, yet the Romanians are strongly advise to wait a little longer.

It doesn’t mean else, but only that Romanians will still have to wait in long queues for getting the American visa while intending to travel to the American soil, while Polish won’t. Talking to some travel agencies representatives, we found out that, compared to some years ago, US Embassy in Romania softened its criterion for granting visa to the Romanian citizens. It means that the average Romanian wanting to travel to the United States won’t have any problem to get the visa.

From this perspective, it is only a diplomatic issue and Romanians have to wait for the opportunity of the same sort as the Polish people have now. What kind of opportunity are we talking about here?

When trying to see the two countries through the eyes of the American administration, there are some obvious reasons why Poland is viewed differently than Romania. Despite the resemblances, the differences are those who matter.

Resemblances between Poland and Romania as seen by the US

Both countries host American defensive missile systems on their territories. It is an important sign of good faith for the American administration which do appreciate their partners worldwide, military or economic.

Both countries have a good relationship with the American administration, democrat or republican. Also, both countries, despite some random episodes of rebellion against democratic values, continue to embrace democracy and its principles. When Poland seemed to have forgotten some of these values, president Obama arrived in Warsaw and delivered a speech meant to re-send Polish establishment to the right path. When Romania’s leaders started behaving in an anti-democratic way, the American ambassador to Bucharest did everything in its powers and more in order to put the country back on its democratic track.

Both countries are among those with a growing economy. Poland is constantly growing, while Romania did the same especially in the last 3 years, when it reached top 3 in EU in terms of GDP increase.

Differences between Poland and Romania as seen by the US

While Poland already reached the country with a developed economy status, making Poland the first country from the former communist bloc to achieve this status, Romania is still on its way. Despite the constant grow of its GDP, Romania still doesn’t prove a certain consistency in terms of economic prediction, entrepreneurial support or corruption fighting.

While Poland has 38 million citizens, Romania has only half of it, somewhere around 19 million. This means Poland is double a potential market for the American products than Romania, and this is quite a big difference.

While Poland is trying to get rid of its dependency of importing Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) and it is looking to increase imports from USA, Romania has no need in doing so, being the single European country which exploits LNG for its people’s needs, but also exports LNG to other neighboring countries. A very eloquent example: PGNiG, the Polish leader in the natural gas market, recently signed a deal with the American companies to import 7.4 billion cubic meters of American LNG by 2022, in an attempt to diversify the source of imports and to get rid of the dependency for the Russian gas. Also, they signed another deal of helping the American companies export LNG through Poland to Ukraine. Right under Russian’s nose. Bold, ain’t it?

Are all the above critical for the American administration when they decided to offer the access to Visa Waiver program to Poland and not to Romania? We do think so.

In our opinion, Romania will have to wait for and to take advantage of the perfect opportunity for being granted in their turn the access to Visa Waiver program. Would it be also granted on economic grounds? We do hope so, as compared to the possible military grounds.