More specifically, I am referring to the fact that EU accession benefits were not evenly distributed across the economy, as reflected for instance by rising regional divergence. Bucharest, alongside other important cities, as well as areas either in the proximity of the Western border or in which industrial clusters appeared, did much better than other areas, particularly those in the North-East, which are lagging behind. The North-East of the country could constitute an attractive investment destination. As there are other regions where the gap between demand and supply of skilled labour is becoming more evident, firms have often encountered difficulties in overcoming the challenges posed by poor transport infrastructure – the one that makes us sigh. Because of the lack of investments, administrative units do not have an economic core and people have little choice but to move to a larger city or to another country. This is perhaps the most important challenge Romania is facing right now and I see only one way of overcoming this: continuing to increase our competitiveness and productivity in such a way as to preserve macroeconomic balances and reduce inequality. No country can obtain sustainable economic growth by boosting consumption and undermining contractual discipline, but by implementing structural reforms leading to productivity gains. As Paul Krugman said “productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker”.
Here we can see that while sovereign debts have increased considerably in the United States and the euro area in recent years, Sweden’s sovereign debt has decreased more or less continuously over the last 15 years. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  This indicates that the economic-policy framework in Sweden has worked well. The framework reflects the lessons we have learned from our own problems in the past, not least during the 1970 and 1980s, and we should build on this. The framework largely addresses three areas: fiscal policy, wage formation and monetary policy. The first area, fiscal policy, had to be changed following the crisis of the 1990s as the problems with Sweden’s public finances became acute. At the same time as austerity packages were implemented, great importance was attached to not ending up in the same situation again. The introduction of surplus targets, expenditure ceilings and the stipulation that municipalities should have balanced budgets also contributed to increased stability in public finances. A number of important reforms were also implemented that significantly improved the budget process. Figure 14 clearly shows the positive effects of all this on the budget. The second area is wage formation, which has also improved considerably since the mid1990s. The Industrial Agreement and the setting up of the National Mediation Office are two important factors behind this improvement. Nominal wage increases have been significantly lower over the last 15 years than in the 1980s.