[ossworkerrights]

This seems like a recipe for success that can be applied in some east european countries still lagging behind the rest of the eu: take old and run down shop in areas with a good potential, provide kick ass services and improve the look and feel of things.

[mschuster91]

> in areas with a good potential

You won't have much of these in (South) Eastern Europe. There is a massive brain drain towards Western Europe... every shop needs customers with spare money to go shopping and that's hard for anything that's not absolute necessities when all working-age people from the area went off to greener grasses.

Originally that was the reason why the EU introduced various funds to improve life/economy in the poorer regions... while for some regions it worked out decently, many others had all the money sucked off to corruption. Between 2013 and 2017, for example, at least 1.5 billion € in development funds were wasted (https://kurier.at/politik/ausland/betrug-mit-eu-foerdergelde...).

[ossworkerrights]

Yeah having been back to Romania for a while now I think the article is a gross understatement of the amount of fraud and poor investment choices surrounding EU funding. However, the country is undergoing a massive bubble at the moment, and most areas appear to be undeserved or served by low quality services. By following the example of this Egyptian guy, one could really make a difference and turn a nice, clean, profit in here.