There is no running water, no bathroom, no lavatory.”I am only 29, and look at me,” said Ms Serban She looks 50. She has no regular job – most Romanian firms refuse to employ gypsies. She gets what casual work she can, the most she can make a month is $20 (£13). She scavenges in bins for used bottles to sell.The despair caused by such conditions led Romanians to vote for Mr Tudor and Mr Iliescu in the first round. They rejected liberal candidates favoured by the West, and the country’s own intellectual élite, because they blame their hardship on the liberals who have ruled for the past four years.Not only gypsies are poor.

Ethnic Romanians live near Ms Serban, in an apartment block only marginally better than the gypsies’ There is, at least, glass in their windows. The Romanians have put up barbed wire around their building, to keep the gypsies out.Mr Tudor has played on that sort of prejudice, calling Romania’s big Hungarian minority “the Hungarian snake”. But many of his supporters say it is not the racism they find attractive. “We are not afraid of Tudor,” said Gheorge Avram, a gypsy who voted for Mr Tudor. “He is only against bad gypsies, not those of us who do an honest day’s work.”Romania’s man in the white suit has promised to root out corruption, vowing to arrest mafia leaders within 24 hours if he is elected, and try them within 48. It is a popular pledge in a country that has five different words for a bribe.But liberals who despise Mr Iliescu are voting for him to keep his opponent out.

“All my life I have voted against Iliescu,” said Stalian Tanase, a liberal writer and academic. “But today I have to vote for him.”The irony is that while voters blamed liberal candidates for the state of the economy, Mr Iliescu bears much of the real blame. When he was Romania’s first President after the fall of Ceausescu, he was reluctant to push through economic reform on the wave of euphoria that followed the 1989 revolution.The result is that 70 per cent of the economy is still in state hands. As Romania Libera’s editor, Petre Mihai Bacanu, put it: “Iliescu would inherit his own legacy.”. The European Union leaders – ending a meeting of often frank exchanges that dragged across five days – struck an agreement last night to overhaul the EU treaty to make it possible for the Union to take in up to a dozen newcomers in the years ahead. The European Union leaders – ending a meeting of often frank exchanges that dragged across five days – struck an agreement last night to overhaul the EU treaty to make it possible for the Union to take in up to a dozen newcomers in the years ahead.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the landmark deal on a new EU treaty was a major boost for Britain’s interests and a turning point for Europe.He emerged from five days of tortuous negotiations in Nice to claim victory in keeping the UK veto in key decision-making areas like taxation and social security, while increasing Britain’s relative voting strength.The aim of the deal, he said, was to pave the way for the EU’s enlargement in the next few years to usher in a dozen of the new democracies in central and eastern Europe.But it was a settlement which reinforced the UK’s place as one of the Big Four alongside Germany, Italy and France.French President Jacques Chirac, the summit chairman, told reporters that by reaching the agreement, the EU can “honour its commitment to admit the candidate nations” and complete the post-Cold War reunification of Europe.Emerging bleary-eyed from a final session lasting more than 18 hours, Chirac acknowledged there were hard exchanges between leaders of big and small countries over how to share power in a bigger Union.The leaders also agreed to move toward more majority voting in the future, notably in such areas as financial services trade, budget and regional aid.

But the national veto right remains in such sensitive as indirect taxation, social security and immigration policies.Belgium delayed the agreement for some time as it led a camp of small nations holding out for a credible say in the Union after it starts taking in – probably in 2004 or 2005 – Cyprus, Malta and 10 East European neighbours.French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin spoke of a “balanced package (that) opens the door for enlargement. If we had not succeeded, I think that for all the candidate nations this would have been really bad news.”The package involves measures to ensure the EU decision-making capacity is not overwhelmed when up to a dozen countries join the 43-year-old organization.The leaders agreed to more majority voting, reshape the EU executive Commission and provide for the election of its president, allow the most integration-minded members to move ahead on their own if they wish and – most controversially – reallocate votes in decision-making ministerial meetings.Chirac spent Sunday juggling with calculations and tables to find a power-sharing arrangement acceptable to all, from the EU’s four biggest members – Germany, Britain, France and Italy – down to the smallest, Luxembourg.At one point, Portugal imposed a veto citing a disproportionately wide gap between its votes and those for neighbouring Spain. That forced Chirac back to the drawing board from where he returned with new calculations that looked better to many delegations.The issue of assigning votes to individual EU countries, using a formula that uses population size as a rough yardstick, touched on root questions of democracy, power politics and – above all – historical rivalries among European nations.The power-sharing formula that was adopted provided this national breakdown for the EU’s current members: Germany, Britain, France and Italy, 29 each; Spain, 27; the Netherlands, 13; Greece, Belgium and Portugal, 12; Sweden and Austria, 10; Denmark, Finland and Ireland, seven; Luxembourg, four.The breakdown for the candidate countries was: Poland, 28; Romania, 14; Czech Republic and Hungary, 11; Bulgaria, 9; Slovakia, 7; Lithuania, 7; Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta, three.Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt stood up for the right of small countries to get more votes. “We wanted more Europe, not less Europe,” he told reporters.During their five-day summit – the longest held by the EU – the leaders laboured in the knowledge that failure could derail plans to admit up to a dozen nations into the EU in the years ahead.The summit also yielded agreement on these points:- Limiting the size of the European Commission, with big member states giving up their second seat on the EU’s executive body by 2005. Once there are 27 member nations, there will be unspecified further cuts in Commission posts as nations take turns serving on the body.- Replacing unanimity voting by majority voting on some trade areas.