I was just reading the results of a poll about some of the greatest problems Romanians seem to be thinking of. Well, apparently corruption is the greatest evil of them all with some 85% of the interviewed people claiming that there is corruption within the government. This is a HUGE figure and any way you would look at it it signals that there is something rotten in Romania (not Denmark). If it is true it is a clear problem supposedly open to be tackled should the parties that need to do it are willing to get involved. If it isn't, then they clearly have a marketing problem. Either way, the authorities must take a stand, my guess is that the truth is somewhere in between, there are obviously corruption problems but also the Government is incapable of communicating a good image about the job it's supposed to do. If and when it's doing it. And I mean it both on the national and international level.

You may know also that on the international level one of the last "marketing" attempts was an article written by the Prime Minister himself and published in the Wall Street Journal. And even though I agree with some of the comments of people considering it yet another piece of B/S, we should all be aware that it is a marketing thing for Romania. Unfortunately it is only a drop in the rain, it certainly takes more than a flower for spring to come.

Getting back to the above mentioned poll, I also notice the Romanian optimism about joining EU - 71% of the respondents said that Romania will have more to win than to lose by its accession, and 50% think that their standard of living will improve. While I am not arguing the benefits (or lack thereof) of joining the EU - others already seem to acknowledge some - this clearly shows the lack of awareness about what the real problems from Romania are. The governemnt put EU as a main goal on the national agenda inferring that this would ultimately solve all the problems. But by doing so it's just avoiding naming and tackling the multitude of challenges for creating a healthy environment for living and/or doing business on daily basis.