A recent article published in the Financial Times points out the severe austerity measures which will be taken by the Romanian government and the social response to these measures, by comparison to EU standards. “Romania's austerity measures are severe, even by current European Union standards: a 25 per cent pay cut for the country's 1.4m public sector workers, 200,000 civil service job cuts, and a 15 per cent reduction in pensions and unemployment benefits,” writes the Financial Times.

“In a country unused to mass protests, the austerity policies - described by opposition Social Democrats as "social genocide" - have unleashed a storm of public anger that briefly threatened to unseat the government,” the article goes on.

Romania is the first of seven countries to be analyses in this article, which goes on to detail the situation in Iceland, Spain, Lithuania, Ireland, Greece and the US. Read more from this article here (you will need to set up an account with the FT to read the entire text).