To sum up, our gates are open to those of you seeking a career at home. And even if you do not intend to pursue a career in Romania, there are other ways of collaboration. For instance, the NBR has been supporting the Annual Scientific Conference of Romanian Academic Economists Abroad (ERMAS), in partnership with major Romanian universities. A recent personal experience, during a trip I took to Washington DC, confirmed the interest that many Romanian experts abroad share in staying in touch with their home country. There are more than 60 Romanian economists working for the World Bank, the IMF or the Fed. I have met around half of them and I saw how keen they were to learn not only about the Romanian economy, but also about changes in the society. Many were even eager to engage themselves in various cooperation projects with those working back home in their respective fields of activity. I truly found their enthusiasm and readiness refreshing! Although idealism is not a trait one would usually associate with people my age, I confess that whenever I am addressing Romanians who are studying or have studied in the West, I cannot help but make the parallel with the revolutionaries of 1848, who engineered the rapid transformation of the Romanian society and created the modern state almost from scratch.
The evolution of the IT sector is part of a wider process of sectoral shifts in the domestic economy, visible across several emerging markets: the services sector gaining ground to the detriment of agriculture and industry, whose roles have been diminishing. Likewise, industry has also shown structural shifts, i.e. the lower share of energy and labour-intensive sectors in favour of increasingly technology-intensive industries. With the risk of touching on a delicate topic these days, given the location of this conference, I have to mention that EU membership has played a major role in Romania’s development. And I am not saying that only because I was the head of the Government that started the EU accession talks back in 2000. Across the years, there were a lot of discussions with regard to Romania’s readiness for EU accession. Even Romano Prodi, the head of the European Commission at the time, warned me on several occasions that we were not ready for accession, not only from an economic and social point of view, but also in terms of people’s mentality, which was not fully aligned with European values after four decades of communism. I was well aware of that, but I also knew that it was imperative to have a target date, that would act as a catalyst for the much needed reforms. Indeed, much of the catching-up progress was obtained during the pre-accession years, as real GDP grew on average by more than 6 percent per year between 2000 and 2007.