The end of the illusion that we can do everything

Romania’s economy hangs at the end of an extremely thin safety line (domestic macroeconomic stability). There is a so-called window of opportunity open, but the current of history is blowing fast. If we miss this opportunity, in ten years we will no longer be discussing how to catch up with Western Europe, but how we definitively lost the chance to be relevant.

Let me explain:

We are facing a massive reconfiguration of the rules of the game at the European level: a radical, unstable, and profound restructuring of the spheres of influence, alliances, and power relations among the states of the European continent. The new Multiannual Financial Framework for the 2028–2034 period, with a proposed budget of approximately 2,000 billion euros, fundamentally changes the paradigm. The old model, based on comfortable national allocations and passive guarantees, is fading. For Romania, the projection indicates a direct allocation of approximately 60 billion euros through the National and Regional Partnership Plan — money strictly conditional on milestones, reforms, and measurable results. Many negotiations concerning this “European budget” money will take place at the level of the European Parliament and the European Commission.

However, the great competition and, in fact, the great maturity test for a country like Romania will not be fought over these funds guaranteed by the politically negotiated formula. The true economic battle of the next decade will be fought over the enormous package of more than 400 billion euros to be managed through the European Competitiveness Fund and the Horizon Europe program.

These 400 billion euros have no predetermined recipients. This money is reserved neither for Romania nor for other Eastern European countries. It will not be distributed according to cohesion criteria, but will be put up for competition in a tough, project-by-project contest, in direct confrontation with Europe’s industrial pillars and academic leaders — from Germany and France to Sweden and the Netherlands. The existential risk for Romania is not missing the direct allocation of 60 billion, but becoming complacent in the illusion that this sum would be sufficient for us. But if we settle for the guaranteed crumbs and abandon the battle for competitive funds, we will helplessly watch as the new generation of European industries — from artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and defense to biotechnology and advanced chemistry — is built elsewhere, while we remain to pay the bill for consumption.

To enter this new era with real chances, the first step is an exercise in honesty. We must definitively bury the fantasy that an economy the size of Romania’s can perform on all fronts simultaneously. Glorious, jingoistic, and populist speeches can no longer stand in for a real strategy; in a Europe undergoing full geopolitical tectonics, economic survival requires tough pragmatism and clear choices, not illusions dressed up as slogans.

The dispersion of resources has historically been the perfect recipe for guaranteed mediocrity. We can no longer be competitive in every field, and trying to do so is foolish. Romania — and, in fact, its future government — must have the political courage to choose 4–6 strategic sectors to support massively: from Black Sea gas and green energy to the defense industry, high-performance IT, and processed agriculture. This is not an ideological option, but a national emergency dictated by geopolitics and economics. Possessing gas from the depths of the Black Sea and a diversified energy mix must not mean merely exporting raw material burned in foreign power plants, but rather laying the foundation for chemical reindustrialization and high-value-added production. The proximity of war and the status of an outpost on NATO’s Eastern Flank must not be experienced as a budgetary burden; they must be leveraged through the construction of a national defense industry integrated into European supplier chains. Likewise, the critical mass of STEM specialists and the digital infrastructure we possess can no longer be left merely to fuel outsourcing hubs for global corporations. They must be directly connected to the development of intellectual property and our own technological products. And in a world haunted by the specter of food insecurity, continuing to export wheat as a raw material while importing frozen dough is more than an economic paradox; it is strategic illiteracy.

The choices must be made now, based on rigorous economic criteria, not on short-term electoral calculations. Anyone who tries to finance everything, from sausage production to microchips, without a strategy for concentrating capital, guarantees the failure of both.

Such a paradigm shift nevertheless requires an equally profound transformation in the state’s institutional culture. At “the eleventh hour,” the country’s governance must move from an administrative system obsessed with procedures, audits, and fear of signing, to an administration evaluated by its real economic impact, by the qualified jobs created, and by the added value retained in the country. The state can no longer function as a simple counter for distributing aid or as a paranoid control body.

The Romanian economy and society need a “state of orchestration,” capable of bringing public capital, private capital, universities, and research institutes to the same table. The model of isolated projects carried out by a single company has already faded; the new European framework will finance almost exclusively integrated national and regional consortia capable of demonstrating that they can take an idea from the laboratory stage all the way to mass production and export.

Equally, it is time to embrace blended-finance instruments in which each public euro from grants or government guarantees is intelligently structured to mobilize two or three euros from private and bank capital. This is how major economies build their technological lead: by multiplying the impact of public money, not wasting it on unsustainable social projects.

The real question of this decade is not how much money we will manage to draw from European funds down to the last cent, but what kind of economy we will leave behind when these flows inevitably diminish. The world around us is protecting its supply chains, securing its energy sources, and massively financing domestic production capacities. The choice we must make today is in fact a fundamental decision of survival in a European space undergoing full geopolitical tectonics: the decision to put an end to the illusion that we can do everything.