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“Romania is a country that today can seem like an adobe hut in which we fight very, very seriously to have a satellite dish and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi,” economics professor Mircea Coșea said Thursday night on Digi24. . “We are not thinking about the foundations of the house, nor about the walls. So, we do not lay the foundations for our development in the long or medium term ”, explained the teacher, the comparison may be a bit shocking, but plastic.
And to illustrate his statements, the professor invited to take a look at Poland: “See there a model of thought!”, Says Mircea Coșea.
What are the Poles doing and not us?
„Did you know that Poland is the biggest tea exporter in China? China’s largest exporter of tea! Yes, I sell tea to the Chinese because they process it better, there are different categories of tea.
Poland became the second largest producer and exporter of apples.
Poland has become the largest exporter of processed salmon products. They buy salmon from Norway and process it, because they have invested in very modern factories.
The world can laugh, but I want to tell you that the Poles are the biggest producers of snails in a very expensive market. For those who eat, we do not eat, but the French and others eat, they are elements of high culinary art.
What does this all look like? That they used some market crenes. They knew how to get into those battlements.
What, we don’t have apple orchards? Why do we import apples from Poland and not make them? We also import juice from Poland!
Our tomatoes, in that “Tomato” show, were bought en masse by the Poles. We don’t process them, we buy tomato paste from China to make something else.
There are things that if you say, as an economist, you blush! Because you say sir, I see such serious things, I say them, but nobody listens to me or does not want to listen to me or I went crazy!
A country like Romania, which has so much agricultural potential, to end up in the situation where people go to the Ministry of Agriculture to ask for water? What is our priority today, so to speak, number 1? It’s not the roads! It’s the irrigation! Because without irrigation we lose agriculture, we lose agriculture, we are nobody, because we have nothing else! ”- said Professor Mircea Coșea.
How did the Poles triumph?
The “Europe of the Regions” is an old ideal of the European Union. Regional policy is the main investment policy of the EU and aims to support job creation, sustainable development and growth. In short, a way to offer the benefits of the EU directly to its citizens. As the name suggests, regional policy aims to help regions develop and create interaction at the local level. Some Member States understood better than others how territorial decentralization Increase the degree of absorption of financing through regional policy. Poland is one of these countries.
A major administrative reform, implemented five years before joining the European Union: it is one of the reasons why Poland has meanwhile become the largest beneficiary of EU funds. The amount currently allocated, 77 billion euros, is three times what Romania receives.
It all started in 1999, when The territorial structure of Poland has been reorganized into three levels: 16 regions, 380 districts and almost 2,500 communes. The main benefit was that with accession to the European Union, regional governments found it difficult to say how European money is invested. At the local level, the needs of the community were the best known. Thus, since 2007, regional governments have been involved in the development and implementation of operational programs.
In budget year 2007-2013, regional authorities administered a quarter of the total EU funds. In the current year, participation has increased to 40%, or even 60%, if we talk about the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund. This has resulted in a higher degree of absorption of European funds compared to other countries that have recently joined the Community. And because money is managed at this level, the effects of investments are also easier for citizens to perceive.
An opinion poll carried out in 2017 showed that 80% of Poles were aware of projects co-financed by the European Union, given that the EU average was 35%. At the same time, two-thirds said they benefited directly from investing in European money.
There is also the reverse of the medal. The main objective of regional policy, reducing the economic gap between regions, does not appear to have been achieved in Poland. Even if more money goes to the poorest areas, differences in living standards persist.
In the richest region of Poland, GDP per capita is more than double that of the poorest region. Furthermore, the pace of development appears to follow a geographical arrangement. The eastern regions, on the border with Belarus and Ukraine, are less prosperous than the rest of the country.
Editor: Luana Păvălucă
