If you take everything, direct EU money plus other money from governments, foreign investments by companies, remittances from Romanians working in the EU, other aid money that flows in large amounts, not to mention market access and so on.
Anybody who rationally without nationalistic blinders evaluates that will come to the same conclusion. The idea that a Romania independent of Europe, with its shitty Post-Communist economy and the shitty companies it had could have done massively better is frankly delusional.
The idea that all foreign investment and foreign companies operating in other country is negative and explorative is simply wrong. That is the case both for individual works, company productivity and the countries economy. This has been shown to be true in tons of management studies. Insofar as Romania had issues, it its own internal corruption and other issues that they handled less well then Poland or the Baltic's.
> Why doesn't US, China or Russia want that type of help?
Russia did want the economic integration, foreign investments and so on, they just wanted it less then being an imperial power lead by a dictatorship.
If you think that is a better path for Romania then integration with the EU you are utterly braindead.
As for the US and China. The US already has its own set of alliances and cooperative agreements. It also is geographically very different and its so rich that if it was part of the EU it would be a net contributor.
China is again a dictatorship with like 1 billion people that believe they can build a system like US or the EU has themselves. And they of course did take at least large part of that package when they opened to the US and integrated the economy far more. They had foreign investment, much loser capital markets and so on.
To compare Romania Post-Communist situation with any of these, is laughable. And non of those paths are even remotely even an options.
Romania could be more like Poland, the Baltics or more like Ukraine or maybe like the Post-Soviet 'stans' just with less gas.
And of those options its perfectly clear what the right plan is.
If you have some brilliant alternative plan for Romania please share because apparently you are smarter then literally every other post Communist leader in any of those small countries. Or better yet, try to get elected on that platform. Just be aware that the massive amount of direct money and other benefits will go away, and then go watch how many people will still vote for you.
Realistic best case for that plan is that you become Belarus.
Please don't go on lengthy off-topic rants just to put words in my mouth to disprove things I never claimed.
I never claimed Romania would have been better under Russian than the EU. I just asked you to show me that your claimed "help" they gave to Romania came from a selfless position without any financial strings attached in return for said help, because it wasn't.
Corporations in US, Germany, Austria, France, profited immensely, and still do from their operation in Romania they bought with cents on the Euro/Dollar. In fact, they often make higher profits fleecing consumers and customers in Romania than those in their home countries. EU and NATO accepted Romania because they could profit from them, that's it. I know, I worked for German and Dutch MNCs and saw the numbers coming from their offices across the world. Their offices in Asia and Eastern Europe were bringing in significantly more revenue per worker than those in NL simply because the consumers and workers in those countries get much worse deals than those in NL and Germany. It's basically neocolonialism with extra steps.
That was my point, that EU and NATO orgs are purely business transactional and nothing you get from them ever comes for free, and nothing in your follow-up comments disproved this, you just went on offtopic rants throwing accusations in my direction.
Later edit: also, on the NATO side, many Romanian troops died protecting US interest in Afghanistan, because I guess that's where America's borders are somehow, when they invoked Article 5 after Osama hit NY with two planes. Well in that case, a Russian drone hit us last week. Can US troops now please go die for us by invading Russia? Thanks. No? Well then that's the double standards I was referring to, that we only exist to serve their interests, buy their shit, die for them and that's it. Where is that mythical benevolent "help" you talked about?
The GP provided the examples of free help Romania got from EU. The reason the response is long is because you asked more questions.
Here is something you did not bring up: nobody is forcing Romanians to buy EU goods. Romanians also buy a lot of Chinese and Korean goods. EU companies who make money off Romanian consumers compete with Chinese companies.
The fact that there are very few things made in Romania is not due to EU neo-colonialism- is it due to Romanians. There are one or two bright spots in Romania (Dacia, UIPath) but when the best educated young Romanians still cannot wait to leave the country you will not see local champions. And this is 37 years after the fall of Communism.
maybe you are a Romanian living in Romania. Maybe you will be able to convince Romanians to separate from EU and NATO. If that happens, I can’t wait to see the sequel.
Anybody who rationally without nationalistic blinders evaluates that will come to the same conclusion. The idea that a Romania independent of Europe, with its shitty Post-Communist economy and the shitty companies it had could have done massively better is frankly delusional.
The idea that all foreign investment and foreign companies operating in other country is negative and explorative is simply wrong. That is the case both for individual works, company productivity and the countries economy. This has been shown to be true in tons of management studies. Insofar as Romania had issues, it its own internal corruption and other issues that they handled less well then Poland or the Baltic's.
> Why doesn't US, China or Russia want that type of help?
Russia did want the economic integration, foreign investments and so on, they just wanted it less then being an imperial power lead by a dictatorship.
If you think that is a better path for Romania then integration with the EU you are utterly braindead.
As for the US and China. The US already has its own set of alliances and cooperative agreements. It also is geographically very different and its so rich that if it was part of the EU it would be a net contributor.
China is again a dictatorship with like 1 billion people that believe they can build a system like US or the EU has themselves. And they of course did take at least large part of that package when they opened to the US and integrated the economy far more. They had foreign investment, much loser capital markets and so on.
To compare Romania Post-Communist situation with any of these, is laughable. And non of those paths are even remotely even an options.
Romania could be more like Poland, the Baltics or more like Ukraine or maybe like the Post-Soviet 'stans' just with less gas.
And of those options its perfectly clear what the right plan is.
If you have some brilliant alternative plan for Romania please share because apparently you are smarter then literally every other post Communist leader in any of those small countries. Or better yet, try to get elected on that platform. Just be aware that the massive amount of direct money and other benefits will go away, and then go watch how many people will still vote for you.
Realistic best case for that plan is that you become Belarus.