Concerning the Government of Romania's ban on intercountry adoptions and the welfare of orphaned or abandoned children in Romania.

Mr. Speaker, last month I introduced a resolution, H. Res. 578, expressing disappointment that the Government of Romania has instituted a virtual ban on intercountry adoptions that has very serious implications for the welfare and well-being of orphaned or abandoned children in Romania. As Co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), I am pleased to be joined as original cosponsors by the Commission's Ranking House Member, Representative Cardin, fellow Commissioners Representative Pitts and Pence as well as Chairman of the International Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere Representative Burton, and Representative Northup, Costello, Jo Ann Davis, Tiahrt, Bradley and Frank.

Mr. Speaker, the children of Romania, and all children, deserve to be raised in permanent families. Timely adoption of H. Res. 578 will put the Congress on record:

Supporting the desire of the Government of Romania to improve the standard of care and well-being of children in Romania;

Urging the Government of Romania to complete the processing of the intercountry adoption cases which were pending when Law 273/2004 was enacted;

Urging the Government of Romania to amend its child welfare and adoption laws to decrease barriers to adoption, both domestically and intercountry, including by allowing intercountry adoption by persons other than biological grandparents;

Urging the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to work collaboratively with the Government of Romania to achieve these ends; and

Requesting that the European Union and its member States not impede the Government of Romania's efforts to place orphaned or abandoned children in permanent homes in a manner that is consistent with Romania's obligations under the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.

In 1989, the world watched in horror as images emerged from Romania of more than 100,000 underfed, neglected children living in hundreds of squalid and inhumane institutions throughout that country. Six weeks after the end of the dictatorial regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, I visited Romania and witnessed the misery and suffering of these institutionalized children. They were the smallest victims of Ceausescu's policies which undermined the family and fostered the belief that children were often better cared for in an institution than by their families.

Americans responded to this humanitarian nightmare with an outpouring of compassion. For years now, Americans have volunteered their labor and donated money and goods to help Romania improve conditions in these institutions. Many families in the United States also opened their hearts to Romania's children through adoption. Between 1990 and 2004, more than 8,000 children found permanent

families in the U.S.; thousands of others joined families in Western Europe.

The legacies of Ceausescu's rule continue to haunt Romania and, when coupled with widespread poverty, have led to the continued abandonment of Romania's children. According to a March 2005 report by UNICEF, ``child abandonment in 2003 and 2004 [in Romania] was no different from that occurring 10, 20, or 30 years ago.'' UNICEF reports that more than 9,000 children a year are abandoned in Romania's maternity wards or pediatric hospitals. According to the European Union, 37,000 children remain in institutions; nearly 49,000 more live in nonpermanent settings in ``foster care'' or with extended families. An unknown number of children live on the streets.

During Romania's first decade of post-communist transition, the corruption which plagued Romania's economy and governance also seeped into the adoption system. There is no question that corruption needed to be rooted out. The U.S. Government and the U.S. Helsinki Commission have been steadfast in our support of Romania's efforts to combat corruption and to promote the rule of law and good governance.

I strongly disagree, however, with supporters of the current ban on intercountry adoption who allege that it was a necessary anti- corruption measure. There are many indications that corruption has been used as a hook to advance an ulterior agenda in opposition to intercountry adoption. In the context of Romania's desire to accede to the European Union, unsubstantiated allegations have been made about the fate of adopted children and the qualifications and motives of those who adopt internationally. Romanian policy makers chose to adopt this law against intercountry adoption in an effort to secure accession despite the fact, as stated in H. Res. 578, that there is no European Union law or regulation restricting intercountry adoptions to biological grandparents or requiring that restrictive laws be passed as a prerequisite for accession to the European Union.

The resolution notes that the Romanian Government declared a moratorium on international adoptions in 2001 but continued to accept new applications and allowed many such applications to be processed under an exception for extraordinary circumstances. Then, in June 2004, Law 273/2004 was adopted, taking effect on January 1, 2005, which banned intercountry adoption except in the exceedingly rare case of a child's biological grandparent living outside the country. At the time of enactment, approximately 1,500 adoption applications were registered with the Romanian Government; of these, 200 children had been matched with prospective parents from the United States and the remainder from Western Europe.

Intercountry adoption is, and always should be, anchored on the need to find homes for children, not to find children for would-be parents. Nonetheless, the individuals who applied to adopt Romanian children in the past few years committed their hearts to these children and we must recognize that the Romanian Government's mishandling of their applications has put them through a years-long emotional agony. H. Res. 578 calls on the Government to conclude the processing of these cases in a transparent and timely manner. Since introduction of the resolution, the Romanian press has reported that intercountry adoption would be denied in all of the pending cases. If indeed this is accurate, then it is impossible to believe that the standard applied in each case was that of the best interest of the child.

Romania's new adoption law and another addressing child protection, Law 272/2004, create a hierarchy of placement for orphaned or abandoned children. By foreclosing the option of intercountry adoption, the laws codified the misguided proposition that a foster family, or even an institution, is preferable to an adoptive family outside the child's country of birth.

On November 29, the European Commission issued a press release stating that ``according to the Romanian Office for Adoptions, there are 1,355 Romanian families registered to adopt one of the 393 children available for adoption. Thus there is little scope, if any, for international adoptions.'' The European Commission's press release fails to mention that more than 80,000 children in Romania are growing up without permanent families--in orphanages, foster care, maternity hospitals, or on the streets. That less than 400 have been declared available for adoption is a denunciation of the child welfare system. Barely 1,000 children have ever been domestically adopted in Romania in any given year and since enactment of the new laws in 2004, the rate of domestic adoption has fallen further. There is no doubt that if more children were to be made available for adoption, there would be a great need for intercountry adoption to provide them with permanent, loving homes. For thousands of children abandoned annually in Romania, intercountry adoption offered the hope of a life outside of foster care or an institution. That hope has now been taken away. This will fall hardest on the Roma children who are least likely to be adopted in- country due to pervasive societal prejudice.

The Romanian Government and the European Commission are attempting to use a Potemkin Village to hide a grim reality of suffering children and bureaucratic obstacles which prevent them from being declared legally available for adoption. In one case that has come to the Commission's attention, an adoptive family is waiting for biological parents to sign away their rights to a child they abandoned at birth and who has spent the first four years of her life with her prospective adoptive parents. She knows no other parents. Her biological parents have on four previous occasions relinquished their parental rights and yet, because of the new laws, the child has still not been declared available for adoption.

Other sources also belie a Potemkin approach. A November 5th article in the British journal The Lancet entitled ``Romania's Abandoned Children are Still Suffering,'' quotes a charity worker saying, ``of course something needs to be done to help the children here, but at the moment all the Romanian government is doing is signing forms sending children back to their parents . . . It doesn't seem to matter that the parents might be alcoholics or have no means to look after their kids as long as the numbers are cut.'' The article continues, ``Romanian authorities have proudly claimed that last year only 1,483 children aged 0-2 years were in state institutions, compared with 7,483 in 1997. But those figures do not include hospitals, where staff admit they rely on donations from charities and individuals to keep helping such children. . . . The head of the Neonatology Department at the University Hospital in Bucharest says abandoned children stay on average for 6-7 months [and] the situation is almost as bad as it was in Ceausescu's time.'' The article also quotes the head of the Neonatology Section at the Bucur Maternity Hospital, also in Bucharest, as saying ``last year, we had more abandoned kids than ever because the law changed. And it changed for the worse for the people in the maternity wards because the law forbids us to send children under 2 years old to state orphanages.''

At a Helsinki Commission hearing on September 14, Dr. Dana Johnson, Director of the International Adoption Clinic and Neonatology Division at the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital, testified that Romania's concentration on the reunification of an abandoned child with his or her biological family is only superficially consistent with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child or the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. According to Dr. Johnson, ``in neither of those documents is the mention of time. . . . It doesn't tell you how long you should spend reunifying that child with the family. . . . Contemporary child development research has clearly shown that there is a known amount of deterioration that occurs in children who are in hospitals or institutional care and outside of family care during the first few years of life. . . . You can predict that every child who is in institutional care during that period of time will lose one month of physical growth, one month of motor development, one month of speech development for every three months they're in institutional care. You also can predict that from age four months through 24 months of age, they will lose one to two I.Q. points a month during that period of time. The other thing we know is that by placing them into a caring, competent family, that you can recover some of this function. . . . A child that is abandoned in Romania today at the end of next summer will have permanently lost 15 I.Q. points. That child two years from now will have permanently lost 30 I.Q. points, which means that half of those kids are going to be mentally retarded.''

Mr. Speaker, the clock is ticking for Romania's children. H. Res. 578 notes that Romania is a party to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption which recognizes that ``intercountry adoption may offer the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family cannot be found in his or her State of origin.'' State Department officials and nongovernmental experts from the adoption and child welfare communities have testified that Romania's child welfare and adoption laws are inconsistent with Romania international commitments under this and other agreements.

The resolution further notes that UNICEF has issued an official statement in support of intercountry adoption which, in pertinent part, reads: ``for children who cannot be raised by their own families, an appropriate alternative family environment should be sought in preference to institutional care, which should be used only as a last resort and as a temporary measure. Intercountry adoption is one of a range of care options which may be open to children, and for individual children who cannot be placed in a permanent family setting in their countries of origin, it may indeed be the best solution. In each case, the best interests

of the individual child must be the guiding principle in making a decision regarding adoption.''

Finally, Mr. Speaker, with regard to the role of the European Union in this debacle, I ask who in the European Union will stand with Members of Congress to protect these defenseless children? All children deserve better than to spend their lives in group homes or warehoused in institutions where their physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being is critically endangered. It is indeed tragic if the price of admission to the European Union is the sacrifice of thousands of Romania's orphaned or abandoned children.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this resolution. For the sake of the innumerable children in need of permanent families, the voice of the United States Congress must be heard clearly in this transatlantic dialogue on intercountry adoption.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 578) concerning the Government of Romania's ban on intercountry adoptions and the welfare of orphaned or abandoned children in Romania.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 578 expresses deep disappointment that the Romanian government has instituted a virtual ban on intercountry adoptions with serious implications for the well-being of orphaned and abandoned children in Romania.

Immediately after the December 1989 revolution, Mr. Speaker, which ousted the much-hated dictator Nicholae Ceausescu, the world learned that tens of thousands of underfed, neglected children were living in institutions, called orphanages, throughout Romania. A month after the fall of Ceausescu, Dorothy Taft, who is our deputy chief of staff at the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and I traveled to Bucharest and visited those orphanages. We also met with government officials and spoke about the hope for democracy in that country. But one of the most lasting impressions that I have from that trip is being in an orphanage in Bucharest, where dozens of children were lined up with no one to turn them, to change their diapers and, in some cases, even to feed them with the frequency that their little bodies required. It left a lasting impression upon me.

Sadly, all these years later, Mr. Speaker, Romania's child abandonment rate that we witnessed firsthand on that trip has not changed significantly over those years. As of December 2005, 76,509 children are currently in the child protection system.

While the Romanian government deserves at least some credit for reducing the number of children living in institutions from 100,000 to 28,000, this is only part of the picture. The government statistics do not include the abandoned infants living for years in maternity and pediatric hospitals, where donations from charities and individuals keep the children alive; and more than 40,000 of the children moved out of the institutions are living in nonpermanent settings or foster care, or with maternal assistance, paid by the government or with a distant relative who do not intend to adopt them, but do accept them for a stipend.

In the context of Romania's ascension to the European Union, unsubstantiated allegations have been made about the qualifications and motives for those who adopt internationally and the fate of those adopted children.

Intercountry adoption, Mr. Speaker, was falsely equated with child trafficking, and Romania faced relentless pressure to prohibit intercountry adoptions. Sadly, rather than focusing on the best interest of the children, Romanian policymakers acquiesced to the European Union's pressure, especially its rapporteur, Lady Emma Nicholson, by enacting a law in 2004 that banned intercountry adoption, except by biological grandparents. By foreclosing foreign adoptions, the laws codified the misguided proposition that a foster family, or even an institution, is preferable to an adoptive family outside of the child's country of birth.

Between 1990 and 2004, I would note, more than 8,000 Romanian children found permanent families in the United States and thousands more joined families in Western Europe and elsewhere. This possibility is now gone. Some Romanians and Europeans argue that this law, this misguided law, is somehow consistent with Hague Convention on the Intercountry Adoptions and the Rights of the Child Convention. They also allege that ``there is little scope, if any, for international adoptions in Romania because there are so few children who are legally adoptable.''

Mr. Speaker, the low numbers declared ``legally adoptable'' is not something to be proud of. It is a contrivance. Indeed, it is a denunciation of the child welfare system, which now places such an unrealistic priority on unification with blood relatives that it is nearly impossible to determine any child is adoptable, no matter how old and how long they have been in state care without contact with the blood relatives.

If more children were made available for adoption, there would be a great need for intercountry adoption. Barely a thousand children have ever been domestically adopted in Romania in any given year. As a result of the new laws, only 333 children were entrusted for domestic adoption last year.

For thousands of children abandoned annually in Romania, domestic or intercountry adoption offered the hope of a life outside of foster care or an institution. That hope has now been dashed and destroyed.

Last September, Mr. Speaker, I chaired a hearing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe at which Maura Harty, the Deputy Under Secretary of State, rebutted the argument that the adoption ban is somehow consistent with Romania's intercountry international treaty obligations. Likewise, our witnesses, including Dr. Dana Johnson, Director of the International Adoption Clinic and Neonatology Division at the University of Minnesota's Children's Hospital, testified that Romania's concentration on reunification of an abandoned child with his or her biological family is only superficially consistent with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

He also talked about the deleterious effect of such waiting, being held in foster care and especially in institutions, has on a child's mental, as well as their physical health.

When Romania enacted its intercountry adoption ban, there were 211 pending cases in which children have been matched with adoptive parents in the United States. Approximately a thousand more have been matched with parents in Western Europe, Israel and Australia. In the past few weeks there have been unofficial reports that pending applications are being rejected across the board and the dossiers returned to the adoptive parents.

A document from the Romanian Office for Adoption acknowledged that fewer than 300 of these children have been placed in permanent situations, either returned to biological parents or adopted within Romania. The vast majority remain in limbo. This cannot be the last word of what we often call ``the pipeline cases.''

The Romanian government repeatedly promised to analyze each pending case thoroughly, but the review that has supposedly been done was not transparent, was not done on a case-by-case basis, and was not conducted according to clear and valid criteria that is in the best interest of each individual child. These cases involve prospective families who have proven their good faith, by waiting for years for these children. Many cases involve children who will not be domestically adopted due to their special needs, medical or societal prejudices.

In at least three cases, Mr. Speaker, children are already living in the United States with their prospective adoptive parents while receiving life-saving medical treatment, including a child with spina bifida. These children were legally adoptable until Romania's new law took effect.

Let me say that when I introduced this resolution in November, I asked the question, who in the European Union will stand with Members of our Congress, to protect these defenseless children?

Today I am happy to say, members of the European Parliament are challenging the anti-adoption monopoly over this issue and that is encouraging. On December 15, the European Parliament urged Romania to act in the pending cases with the goal of allowing intercountry adoptions to take place where justified and appropriate. In March, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Romania's EU accession, Mr. Pierre Moscovici, reported that he notably differs on the issue of international adoption of Romanian

children from the previous rapporteur, Baroness Emma Nicholson, whose virulent anti-adoption views that hurt the children of Romania are now very, very well known.

I applaud the European Parliament and I am glad that our parliament, this Congress, is poised to go on record very strongly in trying to resolve these pipeline cases.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley), who has several cases in his own district that he has been advocating for.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much and his work on behalf of his constituents.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In closing, I want again to thank Chairman Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos for their tremendous support for this resolution and the underlying issue of trying to encourage intercountry adoption in a country, Romania, that has now, in a misguided fashion, turned their back on those children who could find loving, durable homes with the adoption option.

Let me also thank so many other people who were a part of this, but especially Maureen Walsh, who is our General Counsel for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, for her extraordinary expertise and work on the issue and this resolution. We have had an ongoing process, contacting the highest levels of the government of Romania, from the President on down. It has been ongoing. It has been frequent.

Our hearing that Ben Cardin and I put on last year I think brought all of these issues to the fore in a way that were very persuasive on the part of the pipeline families, as well as the issue itself. The intercountry adoption is a

loving, compassionate option, and certainly is far better than languishing in an orphanage somewhere where the child is warehoused.

Mr. Speaker, so we call upon the Romanian government again to reverse its position, to cease its mucking under Lady Nicholson's pressure, which is now going into reverse. The European Union, as I said before, is showing clear signs that it concludes it has made a profound mistake.

I want to thank Mr. Cardin, who is our ranking member on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, who has been working on these issues side by side.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of our time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 578 concerning the Government of Romania's ban on intercountry adoptions and the welfare of orphaned or abandoned children in Romania and throughout the world. I would like to thank the Co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission), Representative Chris Smith, for continuing to raise this issue of adoption as part of the Commission's human rights portfolio.

As the case in Romania has shown us, the barriers to adoption for children and families continue to be great. These barriers are cultural, political and often have deep roots in a community. While some of these barriers will continue to be difficult to cross, I believe others can be overcome succinctly as part of a continuing dialogue on child welfare between the United States and the European Union (EU) and nations such as Romania. In this particular case, I am saddened that one Member of the European Parliament can hold so much sway over a country on important child welfare issues and successfully play on the fears of a nation that is trying to become a participant in the enormous social and economic opportunities offered by the EU.

For signatories of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, including the United States, Romania and current Members of the EU, there is supposed to be a formal international and intergovernmental recognition of intercountry adoption. Intercountry adoption, as defined and treated by the Convention, is a means of offering the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family has not been found in the child's country of origin.

However, Romania turned from its obligations under the treaty when they enacted a law in 2004 effectively banning intercountry adoption and limiting any domestic adoption. Of course, it is in Romania's authority to enact such laws. But as Members of the United States Congress, acting in the best interests of our own children and as a Nation committed to fighting for all human dignity, we shall continue to advocate for the placement of children in permanent homes. Furthermore, as long as there are thousands of families in the U.S. wishing to adopt and to give a child a loving home that would otherwise not have one, I will continue to take every opportunity to explain to our counterparts abroad why this is such an important cause--for our children and for the health of our nations. There is simply no greater gift than a home and no greater support network than a family.

Meanwhile, there are currently 37,000 children in orphanages in Romania and an estimated 49,000 living in temporary arrangements, such as foster care. These numbers are staggering. This is an entire generation of young people who will not have the support of a parent to excel in school, the comfort of a family when sick or in need, and more fundamentally, the love and care essential to the development of a child.

It is not just Americans that advocate for lowering barriers to adoption. Citizens of several European countries and Israel had a number of pipeline adoption cases that were pending when the moratorium was instilled in 2001. The U.S. is also a sender country of American orphans, something that people often forget. Last December, the European Parliament voted unanimously on an amendment to their Report on the Extent of Romania 's Readiness for Accession to the European Union in favor of the completion of all the pending international adoption cases in Romania. Additionally, according to UNICEF:

For children who cannot be raised by their own families, an

appropriate alternative family environment should be sought

in preference to institutional care which should be used only

as a last resort and as a temporary measure, until the child

can return to the family environment.

I am disheartened by the actions so far of Romania in failing to complete the pipeline adoption cases which would have resulted in placing over 1,000 orphans with permanent, loving homes abroad. I hope that as we face more of these challenges and political barriers down the road which directly impact children, we will work together to get past those barriers which are artificial.

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude by respectfully requesting that this body continue to engage in a dialogue with our allies and colleagues abroad on the importance of adoption, both domestic and international, as a preferable alternative to institutional care.

Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution and yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it is remarkable that more than 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall we are still dealing with the vestiges of failed experiments in totalitarian social engineering.

One of these cases is the shocking situation of children in Romania in orphanages. For many years, the dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, had a policy of encouraging population growth to enhance the country's international importance. He encouraged parents to have large numbers of children, but the economic and social conditions in Romania made it impossible to support large families. As a result, many parents were forced to abandon their children to state-run institutions that were grossly underfunded and understaffed.

My wife, Annette, and I visited a large number of these Romanian orphanages, and what we saw was worse than pathetic. Many children spent long periods of time in miserable conditions that stunted their development and left them detached from the society at large.

Upon the discovery of the large number of Romanian orphans, people from around the world, particularly in the United States, opened up their hearts and proceeded to try to adopt Romanian orphans. In 1990, 121 Romanian children were adopted by American parents. A decade later, the number had increased tenfold.

Because of a new Romanian law, Mr. Speaker, last year this number shrank to zero, and the hundreds of U.S. couples who had already been approved for international adoption were caught up in the change of law that did not allow those adoptions already in the pipeline to go forward. Their dream of having children and creating a family has been devastated.

No one doubts that there have been serious problems regarding the international adoption situation in Romania since the earlier 1990s. Exorbitant fees and false medical information, in some cases, have blazed across the media, and the Romanian moratorium on international adoptions that was instituted in 2001 may well have been a wise move, although children in mid-process were caused needless suffering.

Rather than creating a pause and developing a new system, Romania has instituted a new law that virtually prohibits international adoptions. Clearly, we all support children remaining in their home countries, being integrated into their own societies. However, where there are not enough willing parents, international adoption is one way to address the best needs of the orphan child.

I am very pleased, Mr. Speaker, that our Department of State has taken a strong interest in this matter and that they are pushing the Romanians, at a minimum, to deal with American citizens whose petitions were in mid-process. I also support their efforts to clarify the European Union's role in this new law, since the Romanian government has suggested that the new approach is based on accession talks with the European Union.

Mr. Speaker, let me say that in the next year the United States will become a party to The Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoptions. This will work to ensure that all countries avoid the abuses that led Romania to close their adoptions in the first place.

I urge all of my colleagues to support our carefully crafted resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of our time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to first start out by congratulating my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), as well as the bipartisan support from Mr. Lantos on this effort, and certainly their leadership in trying to resolve this issue. While it only affects a couple of hundred American families right now, for those families that it does affect, it is a profound issue in their lives.

As I think Mr. Lantos has very eloquently summarized, as has Mr. Smith, the large implications of the cases, I would like to bring it down to what it means to an individual family, that family in New Hampshire being Allison and Mike Schaaf of Stratham.

They have adopted a Romanian child. They have provided that child with a loving home, a home that would not have been possible for that young man, Hunter, to have been able to have had in Romania, where there were some 100,000 orphans living in orphanages, and the Schaafs and a number of other people in my district have done that.

As a result of the success that they had and the ability to be able to bring this child to the United States and provide him a loving home, they wanted to have a second Romanian baby that they adopted, and in the course of going through the paperwork and getting the final approval, all of which were in place, the Romanian government changed their laws, which is understandable given the fact that they wanted to become a member of the European Union.

What we are advocating and what this resolution would help us do is, once again, remind the Romanian government that for those cases that were previously approved and for everything, except actually releasing the orphans to their American parents when this law changed, that in fact the Romanian government should follow through on that commitment for those 200 or so American families that have gotten all of their paperwork approved and the cases all but resolved except for this law.

It is my hope that the European Union and the leaders of the European Union are going to recognize the legitimacy of the claims of the 200 or so American families and perhaps as many as 2,000 other European families and resolve these cases that have been previously approved for the benefit of families in this country, like Allison and Mike Schaaf, who provided such loving, kind and warm homes.

I once again thank the bipartisan sponsors, Mr. Lantos and Mr. Smith, for their continued advocacy on this and look forward to continuing to work with you to try to resolve this situation, and I thank you again.