Steps for Romania's accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

History shows that with the entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development there is an almost immediate increase in direct investments, and the country's rating is improved, says the State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinator for Romania's accession to the OECD, Luca Niculescu. He presented at a specialized event organized by Deloitte Romania the next steps for accession.

Luca Niculescu: In June, we received a so-called roadmap, which is a document of tens of pages in which all the fields in which Romania must collaborate in order to join the OECD are outlined. To this document, the Romanian state will respond with another document, the initial memorandum, that is, a document of several hundred pages, maybe even a thousand, which is a self-evaluation of the way in which the legislation, policies and practices in Romania align legal instruments of the OECD, and here we are talking about 26 fields and 234 legal instruments. It represents a serious and lasting effort, which will extend even after the accession to the OECD. We are in the last phase of drafting the memorandum, I hope to submit it very soon. After that we will receive a series of questionnaires, and evaluation committees will come. We will be evaluated by those committees in relation to how we apply the OECD standards and after each one gives us the green light, then we will join.

Luca Niculescu said that it is difficult to estimate when the effective accession of Romania to the OECD will occur, specifying that the criteria for this wave of expansion are somewhat higher than in the past.

Translated by: Radu Matei