Rumanian hard cash policy defies Russia

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 22

Rumanian hard cash policy defies Russia

By

SUE MASTERMAN and ANTON KOENE,

Vienna Rumania, the rebel among the East European satellite countries, has gone out on a limb yet again with its overnight rul’ng that the petrol coupons necessary for every foreign visitor can be bought only with convertible currencies. That meant that thousands of Iron Curtain tourists from East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, travelling to or through Rumania for their Baltic summer holidays, were stranded. Hungary was the first Comecon country to retaliate: it ruled that Rumanian bus and lorry drivers must pay in dollars for their petrol in Hungary. More reprisals were expected. But the Rumanians are determined to stick to their stand. That the other East European countries are equally desperate for convertible currencies leaves them cold. They are no longer willing to subsidise fellow Communists with their hard-won petrol, half of which comes from Rumania’s own oil wells. The Rumanian argument

is simple. To provide the hundreds of thousands of tourists in transit with petrol, Rumania has to import extra supplies from either the West or the Soviet Union. For Western oil Rumania obviously has to pay in convertible currencies. But the Soviet Union also insists on payment in convertible currencies, or in goods which can be sold to the West. The Rumanians thus argue that it is logical to ask tourists to pay in the same currencies. The blame for the measure has been placed by the Rumanians firmly on the Soviet authorities. The first Soviet reaction has been careful. Russia has offered to mediate between Rumania and the other East European countries, who are fuming at the timing of the Rumanian measure. They accuse the Rumanians of trying to discourage East European tourism to make room for more Western tourists. Rumania has the other Warsaw *Pact countries over a barrel. Last year two million East European tourists spent their holiday in Rumania and many more crossed the country on their way to Bulgarian holiday resorts. There is no realistic alternative transit

.route. Nor is there an alternative for the Baltic coast. For East Europeans a holiday in another Iron Curtain country is not an automatic right. Applications have to be made up to a year ahead to the State travel agencies, and on average only one applicant in three succeeds. The Polish, East German, Hungarian and Czech State tour operators have been quick to supply their stranded tourists with the necessary dollars or petrol coupon vouchers. Each Government is well aware that hell hath no fury like a worker whose holiday has been sabotaged. For the moment, the Governments may fulminate. But they have no alternative but to capitulate to Rumania’s demands. Rumania’s intentions in introducing this measure form a separate chapter. With its ever more Western-oriented economy, it looks as though Rumania is aiming towards a period when, after the example of its neighbour, Yugoslavia, it can make its currency convertible instead of being, like that of other East European States, strictly for internal use only. —O.F.N.S., Copyright.