Let’s be honest and admit that, 12 years ago, when Romania joined the EU, we all expected more. Most of the expectations we had back then have not come to fruition because of us, as a people. The EU cannot modernize Romania from the outside.
„A Modern Country” is what the people in the streets indisputably demand. This project is about how we use the European Union – the funds, the legislation, the regulations, assumed obligations, reports, debates – to modernize Romania from the grass roots up.
„A Modern Country” targets very specific issues, like the Romanian Centennial coming and going without the country being united by highways, despite having European money designated for this particular purpose. It explores why we lack selective waste collection. And why at the height of our modernity we have piles upon piles of plastic bottles in our forests. It is about the tens of thousands of poor children in our country. The same country with the highest dropout rate in the EU. The same country that designated most of its European funds to reduce the dropout rate. It is about how we have failed to digitize state institutions, although we have the right to do so as European citizens. The right to not have to carry documents from one institution to another by hand; there were also European funds allocated to solve this problem. We as a country have become inured to these shortcomings and we take them in stride, usually with a shrug and an exclamation of “That’s just how it is in Romania!” or that there is nothing we can do. We can absolutely do something about it and there are clear solutions to these problems.
This project is about change and growth and doing what is best for the Romanian people- “A Modern Country”. It is up to us to make this change. It is all on us- those of us who chose to stay.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN member states, provides a common plan for achieving 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
The European Union is committed to supporting Member States in implementing the 2030 Agenda.
The 17 objectives of sustainable development are aimed at improving the quality of life of citizens, representing an urgent call to action. The objectives are meant to guide government policies towards specific solutions, with an impact at several different levels. We extracted the comparative data between Romania and the EU average for each sub-indicator from Eurostat. These data points offer a foil of Romania’s modernization progress.
Government policies in Romania should align with these objectives. Our governance solutions follow this logic: our role as an EU member provides us with tools to modernize Romania (funds, governance, recommendations); The EU’s 2030 Agenda represents a target for all Member States. This is the direction Romania’s modernization should take.
