Romania assessed by 26 committees in the OECD accession process

Romania is being assessed by 26 committees on various areas in the process of joining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the government has responded with a roadmap memorandum with milestones to be met, says Secretary of State Luca Niculescu, national coordinator of the accession process.

He stressed at the annual conference of the Association of Bank Financial Analysts that the assessment process is proceeding normally:

Luca Niculescu: Immediately after this document, which we submitted on 15 December 2022, a lot of questions started to come in from the 26 committees and I calculate that we have received over 10.000 questions so far, hundreds of questionnaires, as well as 36 evaluation missions from these committees. So, we are now at the stage where we have more or less finished the evaluation missions and now the hearings have already started. There was an interview with the United States ambassador in which she said that Romania is the most advanced of the six candidate countries, now seven, because Indonesia's candidacy intervened a month ago, so this is what the United States says, which is one of the countries most attentive to the accession process.

Luca Niculescu says that there is no fixed deadline for accession, pointing out that there have been countries that joined in three to four years, but also countries that took 10-11 years.

For European countries, the process was generally shorter, he added.

Translated by: Radu Matei