Sequential approach of the Romanian economy before and after accession - Cristina Bălăceanu

Romanians have the cult of waiting.
They have always waited for something and hoped that their wait would be rewarded. They often replaced their own efforts with a passive, almost fatalistic expectation, believing that their lives would become better or freer through the intervention of envoys. They waited for the Americans to get rid of communism, they waited for the market economy to get rid of poverty and trouble, they waited for the European Union to get rid of isolation and backwardness.
The Americans did not come when they were expected, the market economy only enriched a few of them, and the European Union only gave them the chance to become strawberries in Spain or masons and maids in Italy.
The crisis period we are going through has generated another state of waiting. The International Monetary Fund is expected to save a Romania that can no longer support its own citizens, which even after three years of accession to the European Union has failed to turn the benefits of this accession into factors of economic growth and modernization of society.
Romania's economy, like the Beauty in the Sleeping Forest, awaits the miracle of awakening to life, as always, through the intervention of someone else, through support from elsewhere, through the care and responsibility of others. Wrong.
In a world of globalization and strong competitive struggles between the main pillars of the world economy, one's own effort is becoming increasingly important. Before being globalized or Europeanized, economies are and will remain national, and their strength is expressed directly through the ability to mobilize and streamline their internal potential.
It was a great pleasure for me to find in the work of the young author, associate professor Cristina Bălăceanu, PhD in economics, this understanding of the importance of changes in conceptual approach on the structure and competitiveness of the Romanian economy in the accession to the European Union. It is comforting to note that a representative of the young generation of Romanian economists detaches himself from the mioritic fatalism specific to many of us, placing a courageous emphasis on the need for a profound change of mentality in the direction of transforming our own effort of thought and action into a decisive modernization factor. and Romania's progress in the context of joining the European Union.
Apart from this obvious quality of conceptualization and demonstration of the importance of the role of national effort in European economic integration, the paper is a successful example of economic analysis, giving a broad and correct picture of the current structure and dynamics of the Romanian economy. The measures that the author suggests in the direction of correcting or rethinking some elements of economic policy could be immediately transformed into guidelines of a possible strategy to get out of the recession and relaunch the economy.
Although it is not the first published paper, Cristina Bălăceanu, associate professor of economics, proves by this that she meets two qualities that I hope she will use to the fullest in the future to become a well-known and appreciated name of Romanian economic literature. These qualities are the robustness of logic and the elegance of style.

Prof. univ. Dr. Mircea Coşea

May 14, 2010