📖I am pleased to announce the launch of Club Romania’s book dedicated to 🇷🇴Romania’s accession to the OECD, a collective work to which I had the pleasure to make my contribution, in the form of a chapter devoted to the role of the OECD in global governance. It is a great honor for me to be among the economists, diplomats, public intellectuals, former and current Ministers, and other governmental officials of Romania who have signed this impressive volume, with a generous foreword by Mathias Cormann, OECD’s Secretary-General.

The volume is more than a detailed radiography of Romania’s efforts to join the OECD (our most significant country project after NATO and EU accession). It is a testament to the fact that our nation’s elite is fully committed to participating with great responsibility and entrepreneurship in meeting all the demands that this process entails, to bring Romania into the exclusive club of the world’s most developed economies.

Unfairly and without much argument, many accuse Romania of the fact that after Euro-Atlantic integration, we have not found the inner resources to renew our country project, so that we are no longer prisoners of the ‘punching below our weight’ strategy. In my opinion, the diligence with which the governments have invested significant resources to materialize our accession to the OECD (even keeping this project out of the political debates of the most packed electoral year in our history) as a strategic objective for the country is admirable and shows a great deal of maturity in our tense neighborhood. Romania will become a vigorous member of the OECD, ready to make its contribution to the development of public policies of the highest quality that will bring prosperity to us all and an instrumental role in mobilizing this endeavor is played by His Excellency Ambassador Luca Niculescu, the national coordinator of the accession process and an exceptional diplomat, whom I have the honor to consider a real mentor.

The accession process is dense and requires rigor. Romania has moved dynamically to obtain almost a third of the formal opinions needed in just two years since the resumption of accession talks. A real all-hands-on-deck effort on the part of the central administration, and an opportunity for Romanian society and economy to come together in unity, inspiration, and modernization at a time when the temptation of division and polarization is so strong. If anything, collective projects such as this one prove that we do have all the internal resources to surpass these temptations for the greater goal of national renewal.

This volume would not have seen the light of print without its talented editors, to whom we are grateful. A special thought of gratitude to Mr. Stoian Marius and Mrs. Adriana Baitan for their determination to put this project together: I thank them for their friendship and for their commitment to making Club Romania a true laboratory of ideas for the modernization of our nation.