Romanian Business Leaders: Romania is ready and deserves to enter the Schengen area

Romania is ready and deserves to enter the Schengen area, argue Romanian entrepreneurs from the Romanian Business Leaders (RBL) community, in an open letter sent to the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Roelof Sander van Ees.

"We, the Romanian entrepreneurs, believe that Romania is ready and deserves to enter Schengen. And together with us, the multinational companies and the Dutch companies believe the same, given that they have declared that they unhesitatingly support this. Your Excellency, the business environment from Romania thinks it's time to unlock the gate to Europe," according to the message sent by RBL on behalf of 350 Romanian entrepreneurs.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands leads by far the ranking of foreign investments based on the country of origin in Romania, with 22 billion euros in 2021, double compared to Germany, which is on 2nd place, according to the RBL press release.

"Romania welcomed with open arms more than 5,800 Dutch companies that chose to invest here, from the beer industry, banking industry, agribusiness, technology, trade, shipping and many other fields, names of large companies that chose to invest in Romania for many years. Dutch businesspersons consider Romania to be one of the best places in the region for investments, as highlighted by the fact that they are increasing year by year. On the other hand, we, Romanian entrepreneurs, are also looking with great interest at the Netherlands. We are not only bringing young Romanians to study, but also Romanian businesses and investment funds have chosen your country as their residence," the document reads.

According to RBL, almost 90% of Romanian exports go to the European Union markets, worth about 60 billion euros, of which 85% are machines and manufactured products, transported through customs points that do not cope.

Romanian entrepreneurs claim that every day in the customs from Romania to Europe there are queues of kilometers of trucks transporting goods, and their losses and the losses of the companies whose goods are transported, caused by sometimes spending days at the border points, amount to hundreds of millions of euros.