„We are going through an extremely profound change in the way we manage public finances and in the last three months we have had to make very difficult decisions to remedy a very complicated situation that has been going on for years,” said the Minister of Public Finance, Alexandru Nazare, on Wednesday, during the Impact Bucharest 2025 event.

„Recently, I was talking to a Polish colleague who was asking me about the current situation in Romania. What is Romania’s economic standard? What is happening with our debt? What is happening with the deficit? What are the prospects for the military? These are basically the questions that everyone has in mind when it comes to our economic position, especially in terms of the messages related to the fiscal-budgetary situation. I would like to take this opportunity to send a message in this regard, because I think it is very important to be very clear. We are going through an extremely profound change, a change in the way we manage public finances. In the last three months, we have had to make very difficult decisions, in the early stages of this Government, to remedy a very complicated situation that has been going on for years. Fiscal imbalances have existed for years, but they were not properly addressed at the time „appropriate. And we did that. They were difficult decisions, but necessary, because we cannot build the future of a nation without fiscal discipline and without a very serious plan for the future. To answer my Polish colleague: yes, we will overcome this period,” said Nazare.

He added that Romania has faced a difficult situation in the last 15 years, but has all the necessary resources to succeed. The minister believes, however, that seriousness and consistency are needed.

„Romania has faced a difficult situation in the last 15 years, but we have all the necessary resources to succeed. We have the ideas and we have a very clear plan to do this, and we have the resources to negotiate, but we must be consistent, we must be serious, we must inspire trust and, first of all, we must respect our word when we develop a plan. If we establish something in a plan, together, we must respect that commitment. We cannot forget that we had a commitment three or four years ago and now say that we have a different opinion, this is something that we must change. We must raise the bar. This is where we must start. Raising the bar also implies fiscal discipline and changing the way of planning,” stated the Minister of Finance.

According to the official, in order to secure its investments, Romania must adopt a different mentality in economic diplomacy.

„In South-Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, we need a governance system, not just to debate excessively. We need to improve efficiency and set adequate objectives for Romania to be an active economic actor in the region. And we still need to do something: we need to be much more active in the European Union, not just in terms of absorbing EU funds. Yes, we need to absorb more. Let’s be more ambitious, let’s participate in the design of the schemes in Brussels, not just in Bucharest, in Romania. We need to take the funds. We still have between 10 and 30 million to absorb in the next 11 months, but it’s not enough. We are in a good position to be ambitious enough to participate in the design of future programs,” Alexandru Nazare pointed out.

The Finance Minister recalled the completion of negotiations for the SAFE (Security Action for Europe, n.d.) program, through which Romania obtained over 60 million euros, which means not only Defense but also money for development.

„Another thing we need to do to secure investments is to adopt a different mentality in economic diplomacy. Economic diplomacy is not just a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it is an effort of the entire Government. For this, we need to put the economy at the center of attention, to treat the economy as a fundamental problem of the Government,” he mentioned.

Renowned experts and business leaders, representatives of the public sector from Romania and from South-Eastern European countries are participating, between September 17 and 18, in the second edition of the Impact Bucharest event.

Discussions during the two days of the conference will focus on topics such as: economic development, innovation and how connecting local, regional and global ecosystems can benefit Romania.

Also, the agenda will include various topics from defense and cybersecurity, sustainable transformation, digitalization, the future of cities, to the development of the global economy and the banking sector, leadership, health, marketing and digital commerce.

Among the 200 speakers at the event will be former US First Lady Michelle Obama.

AGERPRES