Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the mechanisms of governing EU funding in Romania. It is based on 16 months of ethnographic material collected in 2008.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational anxieties regarding possible abuses of European Union (EU) financial interests in Romania put in place new control routines. The institutional design of EU funding control was sustained by the specialisation of the justice circuits based on the systematic association between corruption and protection of the financial interests of the EU. However, the transnational-led control framework clashed with vernacular work routines creating its own informality. The unanticipated consequences of the establishment of EU funding control are analysed through three paradoxes: the discursive power of EU funding, informality and the costs of compliance.