Enlargement is the EU's strongest foreign policy tool

The Lisbon Treaty has been called everything from a complete failure to deliver on the initial lofty vision of a European superstate, to an ambitious new instrument injecting new energy into a half-a-century old historic project. Its entry into force today is hence a resounding victory to some, a bitter disappointment to others.

In Romania, it is a day of celebration. December 1st also happens to be the National Day, only this year it bears additional significance.

For the past two decades, thanks to unique historic circumstances, each December 1st has found us a new nation, with a new identity. Come the 22nd of the month, when we commemorate the Romanian anticommunist Revolution, it will now be exactly 20 years since the last silent December 1st, spent behind the Iron Curtain.

One year later, we had made a giant leap: we had built democratic institutions, a multi-party system and had effected the first measures in view of a free market economy. However, all were little more than struggling attempts at genuine modern governance. The capital Bucharest had just been the scene of violent street riots and clashes.

Just three years later though, Romania signed the Association Agreement with the EU. In 1995, we formally applied for membership and in 2000 we began accession negotiations. In 2004, we became NATO members and in 2007, we entered the EU.

Today, we partake fully in the re-creation of the European Union, as shaped and defined by the Lisbon Treaty, while the Romanian commissioner-designate for agriculture is ready to take responsibility for almost a third of the EU budget.

The wisdom of recent years has taught us that great projects do not emerge out of a flawless visionary impulse of a generation, but through the constant struggle for self-improvement of successive ones.

Throughout the past 20 years, we have built imperfect institutions in Romania, but we have built them of our own accord and, by permanent revision and learning from our mistakes, they have taken us where we are today. We have gone a long way down the road of justice reform and fight against corruption, but we are still committed to improvement.

It will continue to be our task in the future to put our administrative tools to work to the best of our people's interest – and the same goes for the new European architecture.

More importantly, we have learnt that institutions are the means, not the end in itself. Thus, what we ought to be celebrating today is the shift from reflection and introspection to re-energised action inside the EU and on the global stage.

The world around us is changing at a speed which no longer affords us the comfort of contemplation.

As we are witnessing the end of an economy of illusions, in Romania and in the rest of the EU, we need a new agenda of competitiveness meant to generate jobs and restore economic growth.

Working on the EU's own neighbourhood first

At the same time though, we need to finally take a serious look beyond our borders. It is fortunate that this same December, which breathes new life into the EU idea, also brings Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins the right to travel freely within Europe.

I do hope though that the same will soon be true for citizens of the Republic of Moldova, who speak the same language as Romanians and share the same ideals and whose fate is undeniably connected with that of Europe.

We cannot have a voice in international affairs if we do not make ourselves heard loud and clear in our own neighbourhood first.

As a country whose fate has been fundamentally determined by its European aspirations, we know only so well that we cannot fail our neighbours without ultimately exposing ourselves to failure of our own project.

The perspective of bloody conflict right at our eastern borders or that of economic and political instability in Ukraine, our largest neighbour, risks plunging the region again in the confrontational logic of spheres of influence. But it will also condemn the EU to international irrelevance.

I do hope that the Lisbon Treaty will give us an incentive to continue to use wisely the most powerful foreign policy tool we have, enlargement itself. I also believe we need to see in the current economic crisis a reason to move all engines ahead, as we need to explore new markets, rather than reduce speed.

Let us not forget that the first European Community enlargement took place in 1973, producing what is perhaps the most successful story of all: the rise of Ireland from being one of the poorest countries of the EC to the second highest GDP per capita today.

And yet that same year Europe was being hit by the most severe oil crisis, followed by continental recession - to which member states responded only by further strengthening their economic cooperation and their ambitious plan for a single currency. And by further enlargement.

The writer is President of the Romanian Senate and President of the Romanian Social-Democrat Party.