Thousands of homes — estimates range between 5,000 and 6,500 — have been filled with mud in several villages in eastern Romania, following severe floods in recent days. Approximately 20,000 homes were impacted by Storm Boris, which has ravaged Central Europe and dominated headlines for days.

However, from a macroeconomic perspective, Storm Boris did not significantly impact Romania's key economic hubs or its core working population, which are concentrated in urban areas and tend to shape public opinion and media coverage.

That doesn’t diminish the humanitarian crisis faced by those relying on public support, particularly as they are the weakest segment of the country’s population. Several hundred people in Romania now rely on public support in the camps organised by the government.  

Still, the floods quickly faded from the headlines in Romania. A large part of the population in the area hit by the storm was either working abroad, or in their apartments in the cities when Storm Boris arrived at their countryside homes. The flooding thus hit the weakest people — those who remained in the villages — and most of them still managed to get support from their families in urban areas.

Unlike Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava or Prague, Bucharest and the other large Romanian cities that account for most of the country’s GDP are not on major rivers. 

The flow on the Danube is controlled by two dams, so the most exposed populated areas are small villages on rivers insufficiently touched by the communist regime’s river regulation campaign. A river regularisation project abandoned on the fall of communism in 1989 could have prevented the flooding of several villages over the weekend, according to experts.

Estimating the damage is challenging, as very few of the damaged houses were insured under the mandatory scheme, and perhaps none under voluntary schemes. Much of the damaged infrastructure was already in poor condition. There were no factories, large farms or modern retail establishments in the affected areas. Banks rarely even have ATMs in villages like those hit by the floods. Even the betting shops found on almost every street in Romania are banned by law from villages with a population under a certain threshold.

The executive quickly decided to pay out €20mn from the reserve fund, or €2,000 per damaged house, and jumped at the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to support the affected population ahead of the parliamentary elections this year.

While firefighters were still rescuing people in the flooded areas, the president of the junior ruling National Liberal Party (PNL) Nicolae Ciuca was launching his presidential candidacy.

Meanwhile, Social Democrat leader and Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu was celebrating the appointment of Romania’s nominee in the European Commission. Ironically, Roxana Minzatu was appointed as commissioner for social policies, an area where Romania lags behind as demonstrated by the widest income discrepancy in the entire European Union.