RSS
Mugur Isarescu: changes are always painful
Romania's European integration is a complicated process that will still take a long time, governor of the National Bank of Romania (BNR) Mugur Isarescu on Friday told the symposium 'Romania's brands treasure.'
'I think we had a relatively incorrect message, that beginning with January 1, 2007 we are integrated with the European Union. We just overlooked the fact that we had just entered the European Union. Integration is a far more complicated process. This is where the second mistake arises from, the idea that we will live like in the European Union as of the very moment of our accession. This can be a fatal mistake, because it instills on the entire society a hope, an unrealistic aspiration and, let's say, a lack of ambition, a complacency with the situation,' said Isarescu.
He stressed that European integration is a process that will categorically take longer and which means 'struggle with ourselves, with the merciless European competition, change, progress.'
'European integration means high-quality products and services from our part, if we want to integrate, companies and industries capable of European performance and more than that. Therefore we say that the macro perspective allowing us to consider that Romania has strong brands could be called ‘integration through competitiveness'. Once we have products, services and companies competitive at European level we can hope to live at European standards and expect a country brand associated with other European brands and economic competitiveness,' added the BNR governor.
Isarescu stressed that economic growth comes in the first place from 'seriousness, innovation, work, productivity and competitiveness.'
Change is painful, Isarescu said. When Romanian brands will enter the European market, we can then say that our brands have European acceptance.