Romania is not behind in the accession process to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but the most consistent issues come from now on, said the national coordinator for Romania’s accession to the OECD, Luca Niculescu.

“Many people ask us and ask me when we will join. There is no deadline for joining. That is, until you align with the OECD standards, you wait and make progress. We have seen in the previous accession processes that some countries manage to do it in It takes 4 years for other countries to join. It depends on the pace of each. There is a target set by the Romanian Government when a the secretary general of the OECD came to Bucharest two months ago, Mathias Cormann, to launch the economic study. This would be 2026. So, it is an ambitious target, it is a target that can be reached if we continue this good pace that we have so far. We’re really in a good rhythm now. We’re not behind at all, but the most consistent issues are coming from now, because after all the reports, after all the evaluations, which go very, very deep, maybe more in depth than other international institutions, because the OECD is, as you know, an organization that is based on data and statistics and figures, so after all of this there will be recommendations and some of them must be fulfilled by at the time of accession,” said Luca Niculescu, according to Agerpres.

According to him, depending on how Romania fulfills these recommendations, it will succeed in entering the OECD in 2026, and the world is mobilized and there is even a “great momentum” from the Romanian institutions, which makes him optimistic.

Regarding the benefits of joining the OECD, Niculescu stated that there will be an increase in investments in Romania.

“There will be more investments in Romania, that’s what I managed to discover from the dialogue with the countries that entered before us and who told us that this can be seen. Of course, it can be seen that when you enter the OECD, you enter a bigger map of international visibility. You can see in all the statistics that they make and that the OECD statistics are almost a universal model, that is, we see them in all the economic publications. There are statistics that refer to the OECD countries and in which Romania is not it will be. So, being there, you become more visible. Your investments don’t necessarily increase because you are in the OECD, but because you have made the reforms needed to be in the OECD,” emphasized Niculescu.

He specified that there are two types of recommendations, some priority, which must be fulfilled in most of them until accession, and others are long-term and aim at Romania’s long-term policies to have a sustainable economic growth and a less polarized society.