Freelance journalist with a focus on central and eastern Europe; writes for international media. Lives in Warsaw.
‘It was as if the notoriously elusive European identity had finally come into existence, but as a nightmarish vision.’ Claudia Ciobanu, a Romanian living in Poland, describes the dilemmas and mixed feelings of ‘the voluntary migrant’, caught between revulsion at xenophobia and sympathy for the ‘losers of transition’.
The prospect of Romania’s parliament passing new legislation, allowing the expropriation of citizens’ homes to make way for Europe’s largest gold mine, has prompted some of the country’s most significant protests since the fall of communism. Claudia Ciobanu reports.
Paralysed by predictable stand-offs between developing nations and the West, the Rio+20 Earth Summit failed to produce anything but vague commitments. Faced with the impossibility of consensus, governments and corporations opted for a go-it-alone approach. Reporting from Rio, Claudia Ciobanu discerns opportunities nonetheless.
Earlier this year, Eurozine partner Dilema Veche was almost dragged down with the rest of a failing Romanian print sector. But thanks to original journalism, inventive strategy and an independent attitude, the journal looks like pulling through all the stronger, says editor Mircea Vasilescu.
