Romania Tech Nation

Romania Tech Nation was launched on October 8, in the lecture hall of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, an initiative of the National Council of Small and Medium Enterprises in Romania (CNIPMMR), together with Banca Comercială Romana, an event held under the High Patronage of the President of Romania, Mr. Klaus Iohannis.

Romania Tech Nation represents the project of Romania’s transformation through technology, entrepreneurship and digital education.

Romania Tech Nation is a multi-year project with polycentric events, whose main objective is to boost Romania’s transformation through technology. The first steps in achieving this objective is the coagulation of the key actors in three strategic directions: entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurial education ecosystem and public policies, with annual tactical and strategic objectives, in 5 and 10 years.

The main aspects of the project include:

1. Boosting the technology and entrepreneurship ecosystem for Romania’s development.
2. Presenting the transformational projects carried out by representatives of the local technology ecosystem.
3. Providing know-how and resources for students, future or young entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs.

Opening the event, the President of Romania, H.E. Klaus Iohannis, mentioned: “Romania Tech Nation is the project needed by the modern Romania, not only for the message dedicated to the importance of innovation and technology for the economy, but also for the call for mobilization that entrepreneurs address to the young generation. It is the best impetus for the young generation and future businessmen.”

“The nations of the future are technological nations. From this point of view, Romania is today a country of paradoxes. In the last decade, the IT&C industry reached 6% of GDP. The current value of the domestic profile market is around EUR 4.5bn, and human capital includes over 140 thousand professionals. However, the digitization of the economy has remained behind, given that more than one fifth of Romanians have never used the internet and less than one third have basic digital skills, and between urban and rural areas the digital gaps are deepening year after year. We have the lowest performance in the European Union regarding digital public services, although it has been almost two decades since the computerization of the administration was declared a government priority. But the digital transformation of the state is not just about digitalization, but about the profound transformation of the functioning of the institutions, through efficiency, integrity and transparency,” said Cosmin Marinescu, Presidential Advisor at the Presidential Administration.

“This approach is one mainly of the private domain but, to have a technologized nation, a Tech Nation Romania, we need a system, we all need the actors, we need the Government, the private environment to create this system. Education in technology is extremely important, but also education in entrepreneurship, to create new generations of entrepreneurs. There are also other tools that we propose, tools regarding financing, such as Digital Romania, a tool that will be included in the next programming period 2021-2027 and will finance areas such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, advanced digital skills or digital transformation. We have a third project, a third proposal that is dear to me and which we have generically called ‘Destination Romania’, a project to attract not only the researchers and valuable people from this country, but also talents from other countries. Why not, position ourselves as a hub attracting entrepreneurial talents in technology or research-development-innovation,” added Florin Jianu, President of the National Council of Small and Medium Private Enterprises in Romania.