NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Joane spoke at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies on Thursday, announcing the launch of an “ambitious national policy project” for the next decade.

Mircea Joane made a brief retrospective of the last 30 years in Romania and talked about the lack of courage of politicians to “impose” solutions on Romania. Joan emphasized that “disappointment and fear of the unknown can be the basis of support for positive and healthy radicalism.”

At the same time, Joana spoke of “a new ambitious, reliable and sustainable national project over time, it must offer some strategic goals, foreseen politically and in society, and then pursued beyond political cycles.”

In his opinion, five strategic goals must be achieved: the use of Romania’s strategic location, the rethinking and transformation of the state’s role and ability to perform its main functions, a new economic model and a new social contract, and the repopulation of Romania.

Key takeaways from Mircea Joane’s speech:

• Where is Romania’s place in this future? In its center. We must be the zero kilometer of change, the milestone against which every step is measured. I am sure that we Romanians have accumulated a lot of strength, but we have also accumulated a lot of disappointments. It’s time to find your voice and join the European future in a well-deserved way.
• Today, we have four times the GDP of 1989. And yet we are witnessing a demographic cataclysm, with our population reaching the level of the 1960s. In an area the size of Great Britain, we will end up being the country with the lowest population density in Europe”,
• What good is a recovery compared to the European average, if human development indicators remain among the last in Europe? It is not surprising that young people continue to emigrate under such conditions. It is not surprising that the intellectual elite decide to pursue their professional career in another country. We are glad that immigrants from the Middle East or Africa do not choose to stay in Romania, but the reasons for this choice should give us food for thought for any future policies related to demographics and labor force attraction or retention.
• If we have to say something important, in short, we see the economy growing, we have all the security guarantees, but the country is becoming more and more fragile and vulnerable from within.
• We will continue to claim that we are the seventh country in the EU, but we will avoid admitting that we are floating on the tail of the European and international hierarchies. We will continue to waste our potential and miss the best moment in national history. We will not fulfill our duty to the generation of our children, to whom we promised that we would become part of the developed West and watch us lose as its periphery. This would not only be a bitter irony, but a real national disaster.
• Disillusionment and fear of the unknown can also underpin positive and healthy radicalism. The promotion of the national idea is the duty of each generation and each of us, because the essence of the national idea has not changed since the foundation of the modern Romanian state was laid: escaping from the periphery of Europe and building Romania assesses its potential, overcomes itself and restores the historical gap that separates us from the family of developed, prosperous, powerful and influential states of Europe.
• An ambitious, credible and sustainable New National Project should offer some strategic goals, accepted politically and socially, and then achieved outside of political cycles.
  
• I would call it the “Strategic Compass”, the compass of the country’s general direction for the next decade. Each party or coalition of parties will have complete freedom to make their own decisions inspired by their political ideology and vision, but national goals must be clearly defined and achieved during successive governments.
• In my opinion, the goals can be:
• To take full advantage of our relevance and strategic location,
• rethinking and transformation of the role and ability of the state to perform its main functions
• a new economic model and a renewed social contract with innovation as the main driver of development
• revival of Romania.

The Deputy Secretary General of NATO spoke at an event organized by ASE in which they participated

Mugur Iserescu, head of the National Bank, Nicolae Istudor, rector of ASE, and Gheorghe Hurduzeu, dean of the Faculty of International Relations and Economics.

It should be noted that Mircea Joane’s speech is similar to the speech of SRI director Eduard Helwig, which took place on October 4 at the Faculty of Babes-Bolay in Cluj.

The director of SRI called on the students to define a new sense of national pride, the pro-Western patriotism of the Romanian citizen in relation to European democratic values. In his opinion, Romanian politicians are used to “getting instructions” and a moderate, balanced nationalism should be rethought, rethought and recultivated by those with a democratic and balanced way of thinking in Western countries, including Romania.