Romania, as a member state of the European Union, will be part of the economic trend through which large companies outside the EU will try to take over European companies, said on Thursday the President of the Competition Council, Bogdan Chiritoiu, in a conference on domestic production of Romania.

“On this positive side – Europe wants to develop certain capacities (of industrial production). And the eastern part of Europe is better positioned to receive foreign investment – the other side of the coin of this economic regionalization is also a protectionist area that we see it at the (western, no) level of the EU and where we will fit in. What is Europe afraid of? The takeover of European companies by companies outside the EU, the distortion of the European market, because companies from outside the European Union are coming, which do not comply with the same rules on state aid and the blocking of subsidies, and then have advantages over European companies. Measures are being taken at European and national level throughout this area to make it more difficult for foreign companies to take over European companies and the entry of non-European companies in the market. We will also be part of this trend,” said Bogdan Chiriţoiu, according to Agerpres.

The president of the competition authority said that Romania hopes to attract relocated European production capacities from Asia.

“We all try not to lose jobs, in the idea that the crisis will be relatively short-lived, and then the economy can broadly return to its previous situation. But once we get past this effort to save everyone, we will have to realize that there are developments in the economy, there are sectors that are somehow doomed, if you will, by technology, and that is where we need to allow an adjustment to take place.
That is, we cannot hope that things will go exactly as they did a year ago, as we have sectors we need to move towards, where we want to see development. These are the sectors where Romania has a potential it does not use, but there are also sectors where we can do more, where we have an advantage over other countries and we can attract investment, which is why we and other states in the eastern part of the EU are interested in attracting investment from outside the EU to Europe,” he said.

In his opinion, Romania will have to shorten its production chains.

“The thesis is that this crisis has shown the vulnerability that Europe has to imports from other parts of the world and then the idea is to shorten our production chains and try to have more production in the European Union. And we, Romania, like others, we hope that these production capacities that we expect to come from Asia to Europe will be located in our country. We have to see if we can make them better targeted, more specific from a sectors point of view. Until now Romania did not have an industrial policy, it did not try to support certain sectors, but it had a liberal policy, to ensure the same facilities for everyone, and we let the market select the areas of interest,” added Bogdan Chiriţoiu.