The Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service says the EU will survive the economic hardships it is now facing and that Romania will also manage to withstand the burden of its own helplessness.

Amid growing restlessness due to the economic recession we are now experiencing, the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service prefers to use a calm tone. Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu thinks the EU acts as a safety net in hard times for Romania and that the euro is the right key for the way out of the crisis maze.

He also addresses the attacks on the leu, to the foiling of which SIE has contributed, as well as some politically-driven speculations. Beyond the safe language that must be used by anyone in his position, Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu hints that the Romanian political decision-makers are entirely accountable for the way in which they use the intelligence provided by the special services.

The SIE Director explained that, besides healthcare and education, the priority “short list” should also include the absorption of EU funds, as these are the areas that generate vulnerabilities to national security.

„The European Union is not on the brink of dissolution"

Journalist: What is your view on the concern that is now haunting the European chancelleries on the future of the EU?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Probably, it is rather a frown, questions that are experimentally answered by means of new institutions which, we all hope, will prove their viability over the course of time. I’ll give you an example, a recurring topic of political conversation or applied talks at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the European Council roundtables: the external action service. How is it going to be built? How will it be staffed? What will be its precise scope of competences and tasks? To what extent can the external action service represent, in a fair proportion, the national and the European interests, if the European interests depend on the national ones and if the national interests are inconsistent with the European ones? These are questions that the external action service will have to answer. What kind of information will the external action service manage? After all, it is a diplomatic service.

And, just like everywhere in today’s world, diplomacy has access to three main sources of information: the public ones, the open sources, which involve a certain extent of confidentiality, even substance, and which invite forecasting, and the special information, which, given their character and potential effects if used, are handled by the intelligence, espionage or security services, both by those operating abroad, and by those with a national scope of work. As you can see, the construction of the European action service, as simple as it may seem on paper, a direct consequence of the Lisbon Treaty, is the outcome of an enormous cultural, European integration process.

Journalist: Do you think the European construction will survive the current economic downturn?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I am positive that the European project, which we have been a part of for a few years, stands huge odds to overcome any type of crisis. I do not refer only to the economic earthquake, but also to the global political challenges.

But the key condition is to have the national leaders strive for the same priority list.

Journalist: Is it possible?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Of course it is. And I’m not saying it because I’m a true European, but because I can see these things. The European Union is not on the brink of dissolution, it does not give in to the first shockwave. Actually, the euro zone will turn out, pretty soon, I think, to be a providential solution to save the national economies on the verge of hardships.

And, actually, what happened to Greece, the 110 billion euro package, what is happening today, through the secondary package formed at the European Central Bank for similar situations, should they occur, indicate two things: that there is a danger awareness and that there is a solution, even if the potential effects of the internal financing solution of certain states with electoral agendas could cause problems. But good governance can find ways out of these problems, wherever the internal and the European electorate at the same time are able to sustain such measures. And good communication helps tackle these problems.

Journalist: Is there enough money?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: To save what is there to be saved? I am sure there is.

„We are surviving a second wave of the crisis"

Journalist: All countries, even the powerful ones, are in debt today…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Few are the states that can say they are fine. Global governance will experience changes in quality. We discover that, actually, the environment where such crises express themselves needs to be looked for in globalization. The cause is the overuse of the capacities of some major economies. Second: we find out that there are no emerging economies that can absorb such shocks, let alone provide instant solutions from their overabundance. We discover that the EU should not get stuck in protectionist practices, but on the contrary, it should make best use of this context in order to favour exchange. Exchange is the effective way out of these problems: exiting reclusion with deeper understanding of the global economic phenomenon and affirming the interest for other economic regions of the world. The euro zone is an experiment which turns out to be successful, even in times of crisis. And this is not without good reason. Just think that merely three-four weeks ago the single currency project for South-East Asia started materializing.

Journalist: The Gulf States are taking a few steps backwards in this respect …

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Maybe some are reluctant, while others think that this kind of experience can be useful.

Journalist: What will happen if a second wave of the crisis strikes?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: We’ll survive, anyway. In a different way, by containing the excessive right to over-credit every need and by going back to the basic needs that can be catered for from the resources of a real, not a virtual economy. We cannot afford not to see it. We are not living in fantasy. We have to admit, for instance, that an economic disaster has inherent political and strategic consequences. From this point of view, an intelligence service reorients itself, adds to its priority list endless other sensitive skills that it had not activated before: the capability to foresee the attacks against the national currency – and that is what the SIE does - , the capability to provide professional analysis on various interconnected economic phenomena in progress, by collecting expertise from outside the Service. From national banks, from think-tanks, from rating agencies. We are trying to dig deeper beyond appearances to see if there are politically driven speculative actions.

Journalist: Are there such politically-driven speculative actions?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Of course there are. Speculative funds driven by precise political and strategic motivations.

Journalist: There has been a recent debate in Brussels on this matter and the views varied…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: But we should not forget that an espionage service does not work with debates, but with as sharp realities as it gets. Which is only natural. We discover the obvious that we all knew: we knew that economic security plays a key part in the political and strategic security of a construction such as the European Union, but also of a national construction. What an intelligence service can do in the context of such a crisis is to develop sensitivities on issues that it had not followed before, hoping that the forecast, the first red flags will be closely analysed by the political decision-makers and considered in any decision to be made.

„The SIE is monitoring the attacks against the national currency"

Journalist: Give us an example of an issue that the SIE is now watching more closely.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The attack against the national currency.

Journalist: Some Romanian National Bank (BNR) officials have told us that many players on the market “have taken the side of the leu”…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, today they have. The national currency went through pretty tough times in 2008 and 2009.

Journalist: What about this year?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: These types of speculative attacks do not occur as the fever chills of malaria. They are not even regular. Furthermore, they are circumstantial. You can speculate with a currency that is not economically well-settled. And you can speculate especially in a strict-ruled club such as the EU. The attacks on the euro show that there are, actually, no boundaries. But the attack can be foreseen, delayed or foiled.

Journalist: Is there a risk of social movements such as those in Greece breaking out in other areas of the European realm?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: In 2009, in one of the exposés by the head of one of the American special services in front of the specialized commission from the Congress, the conclusion was the following: we are not witnessing an economic crash, but an extended recession the end of which is hard to anticipate and which will hit highs and lows, from which we will recover slowly. On the other hand, the social effects should not be left aside. Are they connected to the terrorist threats that everyone knows about and that top the intelligence priority lists? Yes, they are! How? By means of symptoms and indirect consequences.

One of the immediate social consequences is radicalization. Not the religious, but the ideological one. Self-organization mechanisms of the collective consciousness that everyone thought buried after the ‘50s, after WWII, re-emerge now.

Political formulas that harness the deep frustrations of a national community now surface. And they lead the way with good rhetoric: identify the ethnic enemy, identify the political enemy, identify the economic enemy. It must not come as a surprise if such things become part of the work of an intelligence service. As, by means of the electoral game, such radical teams can then reach executive politics. Hitler got his hands on power through democracy.

Journalist: Where is there such danger in Europe?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Everywhere.

Journalist: Did you watch closely the discourse and rhetoric of the Slovak and Hungarian PMs?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, just as any other regular politics consumer.

Journalist: Does it seem to you that the tone the two used has something to do with this - identifying the ethnic enemy?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will refrain from any answer on the matter, because it exceeds my competences. But I’ll tell you something else: the fact that these states belong to the EU is politically reassuring. From this point of view, the EU has enough antibodies to prevent a re-emergence of aggressive nationalism.

Going back to what I was saying, when the potential consequences of the economic crisis become more concerning than terrorism itself, don’t be surprised if this sensitivity of the intelligence services, that are now re-educating themselves, makes sense after having been ruled out of the immediate priorities for decades.

„Economic vulnerabilities can strike, through their effects, where you least expect”

Journalist: What is today’s main threat against the Romanian national security?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I’m going to attempt to get into more detailed understanding of the term. When we talk about threats, we should rather think of the potential dangers and less of the threats in their violent sense.

Journalist: Let’s call them “risks and vulnerabilities”…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: They have been there forever, they are enrooted in statehood. As we have addressed the economic crisis, it is obvious that vulnerabilities should also include the extent to which the European funds are used, the capability to implement the national strategic projects, the capability to attract foreign investments, the capability to revive the internal economic agents.

All these are part of the vulnerabilities that we take as they are and that we try to sketch, to describe to the political decision-makers. Remember: if the European funds are not spent adequately in real strategic projects, implicit vulnerabilities occur. And they do not affect Romania’s image in the European Union, but the very health of our economy. Such vulnerability can strike through its effects where you least expect, including in the assessment made by a rating agency, which might cause the foreign investors to avoid returning to the Romanian economy.

Journalist: Did you warn the political decision-makers about these issues?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The political decision-makers are very well-informed and my opinion is that all decisions are made knowingly.

Journalist: Do you consider that you receive good feedback from the political decision-makers?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, if the analysed issue is treated with responsibility and courage.

Journalist: What keeps us from using these European funds? What are the causes, in your view?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: My competence ends abruptly in front of this question. An intelligence service is not a consultancy company.

Journalist: It could be for the state authorities…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Not even so, because then the authority-administrative competence relation would reverse. An intelligence service needs to provide intelligence information; the decision – made knowingly or unknowingly – rests with the political factors. This is the very nature of democracy. It does not mean that, according to its mandate, a service does not look for supplementary expertise. I was beginning to tell you about what very many services from other NATO member states already do. Services in the US, Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy are trying to engage specialized professional expertise. For instance, on economic forecast, an expertise that would overlap and generate substantial explanations based on intelligence collected by a specialized service.

The conclusions, meaning academic input and information filtered by the intelligence services, prove very useful to the political decision-makers, who cannot start debates at the Academy or in think-tanks on their own. The important thing is to be able to provide decision-makers with as many options for their future decisions, so they can be sure about what they are going to enact. This is a key aspect and that is what determines the special services to exchange economic intelligence. This way, the comparative analysis of the phenomena can provide our own decision-makers with a wide perspective, not with a parish-like one, of what is going on in Romania.

„Erroneous reports to Eurostat affect us all"

Journalist: Our political decision-makers do not seem very sensitive to the issue of using the European funds…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: All EU states are cautious about the vulnerability that is the use of the funds provided through the EU financial mechanisms. There is a difference of access to these funds between the new and the old member-states, which comes from the lack of experience and knowledge. These issues concern us all. Just like the honest reports to Eurostat. An erroneous report can cause erroneous attitudes that can affect one member-state or all. We come to realize that there is an enormous deficit that nobody had known about for so long. I was talking about Greece, but it was not only Greece.

Journalist: What signals do you receive from the European officials?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will answer in my capacity as representative of the Foreign Intelligence Service, not of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other executive institutions. Romania is a country at the EU and NATO border. Naturally, it has a different type of skin than a EU non-member state.

Romania has a very long border with non-EU states. As far as I know, it is the second in length after Finland’s. Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia are not EU member-states, which adds, even in terms of technical pre-requisites related to our accession to the Schengen space, extra issues on the radar of an espionage service. It means more topics and, subsequently, more expectations from the Brussels fora for good answers to these matters.

Our position is more demanding than that of a state at the core of the EU and surrounded by EU member-states. The special services in countries such as Spain or Italy are obviously interested in identifying a firm European policy on illegal migration. Greece, as well.

This unique, coherent policy on countering illegal migration cannot be established at the EU level unless there is sufficient information to observe how this phenomenon unfolds, to see if there is a positive side to the illegal migration that we cannot grasp immediately.

Journalist: What would be the positive sides of illegal migration?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I’ll give you an example: most European states are facing a deficit of unspecialized or narrowly specialized labour force. Illegal migration turned into controlled legal migration, into accepting the non-European labour force onto the European market could be a solution to this problem.

„Deviant political conducts can emerge in times of crisis"

Journalist: Is, by any means, the intensification of the autonomist rhetoric among the issues of concern for the EU special services? What is your view on such changes?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will answer in general terms. A foreign intelligence service, by means of the intelligence it can provide from the context where an attack to statehood could burst, has a role which is very well-defined by its organic law. Obviously, we are closely watching the phenomena that can generate, through sympathy, extension, or contamination, circumstances that are negative and corrosive for our state structure or for the running of the administration. But let’s be clear on this: what the intelligence service lays in front of the decision-maker for contemplation is just one of the premises for the political decision. The political decision is inherently strategic and takes into account a whole different range of phenomena that the Foreign Intelligence Service does not master or handle.

Journalist: The SRI Director George Maior has recently told us that the Service he runs is closely watching the developments in the Harghita-Covasna region, given the heightened autonomist rhetoric fuelled by the Hungarian politicians…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: And for good reason.

Journalist: Shortly after the talk with Mr Maior, elections were held in Hungary and the Jobbik party managed to enter the national parliament. Has this caused any concern in the EU?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: When we investigate, we take into consideration and start from the worst-case scenario. We are sensitive to such changes that can trigger extreme situations at any moment if they escape control, or the law, that is.

Journalist: What might these “extreme situations” be? What would the worst-case scenario be?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I was telling you that the European Union has a very well-defined and history-proven role. But I am talking about the activity of the Service I run. Obviously, we are sensitive to these issues. Just as what Mr Maior said is as natural and logical as it gets. We are very cautious because deviant political conducts can emerge in times of crisis, which come against the EU intercommunity rules. Which leads to the very discrediting of the European construction itself. But it is not to Romania’s or the EU’s interest to reach such an extent of political simmering that frontiers are questioned or the state structures and democracies fall under continuous criticism on various pretexts. This is an issue of work, not of contemplation.

„The Securitate way of thinking lies outside the walls of the SIE"

Journalist: I have not heard your official point of view regarding the allegations that the SIE influenced the results of the 2009 elections…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The SIE communication policy is very clear in this respect. We do not discuss and do not comment on speculations. I will continue on my own personal behalf: I do not comment on fantasies, so much the more as these are beyond imagination. I am sorry to say that most of those who say such things and who have immoral rhetoric not only do not have the information to support their allegations, but they are also trying to cover the results of some electoral processes that they participated in. This is not how you justify a political failure.

Secondly, I see to the full constitutionality of this Service and as long as I am at its helm, the Service will not sway from its organic law and purpose.

Journalist: The political involvement allegations are usually directed at the operational heads of special services. Is there something you are missing, operationally speaking, in the SIE?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No. In the end, there is only one responsible and you are now talking to him. At least as far as the SIE is concerned, there is no political involvement. Years ago, when it existed, the system reacted perfectly and the antibodies saw to it and swiftly eliminated the danger. The Service is made up of people who understand that if there is something to protect them against political pressure – if there was any – or against any temptation, it is the law. And they are not attempting to breach the boundaries, the contents, and the interest of the law. The law does not confine them, it protects them. This understanding of the legal basis underpinning the activity of an intelligence service is, in my opinion, an indicator of institutional maturity.

But sometimes I notice, to my surprise, that the Securitate way of thinking lies outside the walls of the SIE, not within them, where there are people who have grown according to the European ethics. Inside are people who know what Europe is all about and who are very satisfied with their future prospects within a construction such as the EU or NATO.

Journalist: Haven’t you felt political pressure lately?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Not since I took over the leadership of this Service. No pressure, whatsoever. From this point of view, not only was there no political pressure, but also not even comments about possible political interference. And I think this is the real proof of the seriousness driving this Service.

„People get out of school lacking minimum knowledge for social survival"

Journalist: Are the Roma communities in the West a danger for Romania’s image?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I don’t know to what extent they pose a threat to Romania’s image. I believe that the image of a country is built upon the seriousness of its citizens. I can tell you from my previous experience, before I took office as SIE director. We would be wrong to point the finger at an ethnic-cultural category, trying to throw onto it the whole range of wrongs that we should all feel accountable for. What do we see now? There is a low level of civic, social education. As a result, people get out of school lacking minimum knowledge for social survival and try to overcome this adaptation handicap by resorting to illegal or reprehensible gestures.

The issue is not about the extent to which this problem affects our image, but about what can be done for the Romanian who goes abroad to have ingrained in his / her own behaviour the basic rules of community cohabitation. And this should concern the national education, the way in which we generate civic culture, the way in which individuals relate to their own identities.

Journalist: Why do you think such knowledge, values, and skills are not acquired in school? Why do these things get worse every year?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I fully agree with your observation. There is a real degradation of education in Romania. And we are not blind to miss it. I can see it when I teach my classes at the faculty, but I can also see it in the way incompetence or flat reasoning can find their place in society. And if it is voiced loudly and clearly, it works as a solution. You can’t help seeing that, instead of real protection of worthiness, of knowledge, we are getting to a perverted socialization of mediocrity.

You can say it’s a rightist view. But I don’t think so. It is the view of a normal person. I feel this degradation of the civic environment even when the young come towards institutions, such as the SIE, to look for a career, yet without understanding what the nature of such activity is and the highest professionalism standards that the work in an espionage service requires. But leaving this case aside, just have a look at the quality of education at various levels.

„The young who aspire to join the SIE – less and less qualified"

Journalist: Is education a vulnerability right now?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, it is a national vulnerability that even the SIE takes into account when noticing similar processes in other European states, even in neighbouring ones. Why am I saying it engages the sensitivity of a foreign intelligence service? For the simple reason that a dramatic plunge of the level of civic culture – I don’t mean the intellectual general knowledge – leaves room to extreme political manifestations. You provide a well-rested mind the ultimate solution of radicalism or extreme. And the individual enters the game on the spot, because he is trying to avoid all hurdles entailed by the normal path of a career. And then he finds this perverted way to avoid his own development, skipping stages towards the obvious solution.

Journalist: Did you notice a lower level of education at the young that come towards the SIE?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The answer is unequivocal: yes. This worries me.

Journalist: Is there any pool left to recruit spies from?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes. Eight are chosen out of one thousand. Very many come for a career in the SIE, but most of them do not understand what the restrictions of a career with the Service means.

Very many expectations need to be lowered or cancelled from square one. This is not a career for egos, for strong personalities, for those who strive to make an appearance, or for those who want to use this as a ladder towards the political decision-making. A conclusion about this depreciation of national education can be quickly drawn during the selection process.

Journalist: What does the Romanian society lack for the time being?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Two essential things: education and health.

Journalist: These two issues are not watched by the EU…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Technical aspects aside, they have a very strong national component because they are part of the construction of the state itself. These are elements of cohesion, they come along with the national state, they develop simultaneously with the national state and they often precede the transformation of the administrative system. But we are getting close to a major deadlock. I’m not a prophet with honour in my country, but things are similar in other countries, as well. The civic culture dims, as interpersonal communication intensifies. The latter has been increasing in the EU due to, inter alia, the internet, the telephone, etc. Paradoxically, the intensification of personal intercommunication should lead to a deeper and faster understanding of the cultural differences among the EU states and, implicitly, to their acknowledgement. On the contrary, the process paradoxically goes the other way around. Interconnection intensifies, as electronic literacy increases, while the individual level of civic culture drops dramatically. It is one thing if it drops in a state where the educational tradition allows to some extent such declines, and it is a completely different thing to see it drop where education has gone through deep, structural earthquakes for years in a row.

„There are many smart criminals"

Journalist: Are the Romanian criminal groups operating abroad still a reason of concern to you?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: They are issues on our radar. Organized crime exploits globalization, which determines the rather reactive role of the relevant bodies that counter cross-border organized crime. They do not manage to be proactive. From this point of view, the espionage services are infinitely more important in these fields – counter-proliferation, organized crime for any type of illegal trafficking. It is because they need to catch glimpses of the trafficking segments, if possible before trafficking reaches our national frontier. This deep involvement of the intelligence services in the neutralisation of cross-border criminal networks has a very interesting implicit effect: it added to the strong reasons for cooperation between similar services.

Had such cooperation not existed, the foreign intelligence services would have focused especially on their national agendas. Besides this obligation, the intelligence services would have found themselves in the same scenario as 50 years ago, confined to the fulfilment of their own priority agenda – designed with the undiluted national interest in mind.

Journalist: Do the services you cooperate with warn you of an upsurge in the activities of these criminal groups based in Romania?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Some of them are based in Romania, some others are not. In some cases, the organized crime networks are ethnic. Some others are international and rely less on family ties, on clans. From this point of view, we are… western. No doubt about that. There are Romanian citizens who engage in cross-border organized crime. More and more individuals get involved in cross-border trafficking of sensitive items, such as arms or drugs. Things went beyond the clear stage in the late ‘90s, when the Romanian crime generally consisted of petty crimes, pick-pocketing or begging. Things have moved forward. Globalization swept quickly the old Romanian networks as well which are very culturally mobile, very well adapted from the linguistic point of view.

Journalist: They are savvy...

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: They are technologically savvy: card stealing, illegal use and cloning of cards, cybercrime start raising the Romanian citizens’ interest as well. If one considers their true value, we realize there are many smart criminals. And they deserve another chance in life.

Journalist: Can these criminals be converted?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Theoretically, yes.

Journalist: Do you have a reconversion programme to turn to good use these criminal brains to serve the national interest?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Where it is possible, we do.

„The SIE management positions were cut by 50%"

Journalist: Don’t you worry about the SIE officers losing their motivation after the 25% salary cut?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No. I think there is no intelligence service in Europe that does not suffer dramatic cuts in the budget expenses, whether we’re talking about personnel expenses or investments. Intelligence services need the most advanced technologies and operate with cutting edge, therefore expensive, technologies. There is a premise of principle. An espionage service can run on one euro. But then the information provided to the political decision-maker is 1-euro worth. It can also run on 1,000 euro, and the information is 1,000-euro worth. The state invests in the collection of intelligence, it does not pay for it. From this point of view, the budget cut does not frighten me. But, obviously, I’m telling everyone: “You can cut all you want, you can cut everything, but do not expect real performance”. The value lying in the use of the information is strictly dependent on how you invest in its collection.

We are living in a world where you have to give in order to receive. Things do not come for free. This is not an agency that runs inside a national budget system, stricto sensu. This is not a clerk’s office.

Journalist: Do officers leave for private companies due to tight budget?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: People are more interested, or rather used to be more interested, at some point, in the private business, where salaries were higher. When you measure up a safe career and hypothetic gain – in the case of payments in private companies – many choose certainty, not hypothesis. But I don’t have such worries. The problem lies somewhere else: in the drop of general civic culture, because it is there that you expect understanding for those who attempt at a career in an intelligence service.

The restrictions are enormous and you can’t really pay for them, no matter how much you would add to salaries. The SIE reform started in 2002. Its reform meant general reconstruction on an Anglo-Saxon pattern. And ever since, amid successive budgetary and personnel cuts, despite a dwindling of the Service, quality has increased. Staff has been reduced by over 20% during the last four years. The scope of work extended with more than 50% and the quality of the information improved by 100%.

Journalist: Did you cut the salaries and perks of your employees?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: In December 2009, we reconsidered the criteria and we cut 70% of the incentives, preferring to reward only the highest performance and the concrete exceptional results. I leave aside the fact that salaries do not make up for the numerous restrictions that a SIE employee is subjected to. These are very many and are not reflected in the pay-check. This is not a matter of adjusting quality and the type of work to the potential material reward. We’re talking lives, not offices. Everything that means operational activity was built, is built and functions only according to projects and programmes. Every project is budgeted in time. Deadlines, responsibilities, quantity of resources, use of resources. There are no activities that are budgeted for an indefinite period. The entire management was decomposed in such a way as to leave as few major managing structures and as many minor structures.

Journalist: This is a corporate vision…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Exactly. And keep in mind that we work according to projects and programmes, on specific responsibilities.

Journalist: Will there be layoffs at the SIE?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: There are people who leave and their jobs are no longer filled. The vacancies did not cause a drop, but a rise in quality, which means you can also function on much less, if you know how to distribute well tasks, expectations, and responsibilities inside the project.

Here are some figures, for instance: the 2008 budget cuts meant over 8% less with salaries. The managing positions were cut by 50%. And I’m not talking about the state secretaries only. We rebuilt the pyramid of responsibility inside the Service. We can do with less and we can do better, provided you want to. The issue is about not turning a budgetary institution in a social one. And going back to projects and programmes: when the activity of an institution observes projects and programmes with strict kick-off dates and deadlines, with well-defined responsibilities, deadlines for clearings, specified resources, there is no waste of time or resources. It’s not a big deal. It was a thing that came almost naturally, but there were also shortcomings due to lack of balance. It’s the human output and input. It happens. There are more numerous and less numerous generations. But this process was natural and I believe that its true origin lies in the full reformation, probably unique, of the Romanian state, in which an institution fails to run at full capacity for a while only to completely reinvent itself later.