Romania, as an eager exponent of the new Europe, had joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007. Romanian soldiers were doing policing duty in the former Yugoslavia, Angola and Iraq. Meanwhile, EU accession triggered a subsidy payment of 19.8 billion euros to Romania’s population of 21 million. It also enabled freedom of movement and a massive migration of Romanians to the West, notably to Italy, where the Romanian population topped 1 million in 2007, triggering local anti-immigrant resentment that the Prodi government struggled to contain.
