New Europe

If you run a search on Romania’s IT sector you could easily be left with the impression that the country is about to deliver the next Facebook. But while the country’s IT sector is indeed booming, it also has an innovation problem. Romania has more IT engineers per capita than the US, India, China or Russia, and over the past …

Romania’s economic growth accelerated in the first quarter of 2016 more than estimated. The GDP (Gross domestic product) rose by a preliminary 4.3% according to the National Statistics Institute. This makes Romania the second fastest-growing economy in the EU only behind Ireland. I’m quite sure you’ve read or heard about this ‘success‘ in local media. There is only one big …

In October 2015 in Zurich and yesterday at the Hilton in Bucharest, I attended two conferences about romanian/swiss business and investment relations.  Switzerland is currently the 7th largest foreign investor in Romania, according to Banca Naţională a României with over 2600 registered companies and almost 1 billion EUR in subscribed capital. Among the best known Swiss companies present in Romania …

I’d like to highlight two news stories about Romania from this week that caught my attention: Romania is the EU member with the biggest gap between the rich and the poor. The average incomes of Romania’s richest 20% were 7.2 times higher than those of the poorest 20%. (26 April – via ‘business24.ro’) Romania will no longer have an official …

In a few days, millions of romanians will hit the road for the short holiday over the long ‘Easter & 1 Mai’ weekend. It’s not hard to predict that the country’s road-infrastructure will collapse with countless traffic jams and dozens of accidents. The notorious bad shape of romanian roads will most likely get the blame, although I personally would add …

Usually on weekends, I try to switch off from business and look on the brighter things in life. This weekend, some tasty french breakfast delights, a biking tour and a lot of tv-sports (Premier League, Bundesliga, Steaua-Dinamo, the cycling-classic Paris-Roubaix and the two final rounds at the Augusta Masters) was the ‘anti-business’-program. But by force of habit, I nonetheless checked my …

The ‘Doing Business’-report, published annually since 2003 by the World Bank, is examining the state of health of economies. What makes this study noteworthy is the fact, that the diagnostics of countries is for once not based on visible features such as growth or macroeconomic parameters as the public debt but of underlying and embedded characteristics like the regulatory system, …

‘We are in the process of amusing ourselves to death’   This quote by Neal Postman, a former professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University, is over 30 year old. Postman’s concern was that everything that was important has been reduced by television to a level of trivial entertainment – politics, religion, news, education. ”When a population …

27 percent..   In May and June this year, Romania’s competitiveness in Europe will most likely be the topic of countless conversations across the country. After all, on May 10th, the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 kicks off at the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, Sweden. And exactly one month later, on June 10th, the ‘Euro 2016’ opener in the Stade de France between …

The future of Romania is not a question of money – it’s all about transparency, know-how and education! For once, Romania was the leader in a ranking provided by EU’s statistical office ‘Eurostat’ this month. However, it was a questionable merit, since Romania recorded the highest annual increase in hourly labor costs among the EU-states in the 4th quarter of …