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21.05.2004
15:35 Uhr
Seite 134
international community NEWS
"Don’t be scared of getting close to Romanians" ROMANIANS LIKE TO DO business face-to-face; they consider e-mails and faxes too impersonal. Actually, it’s more like eyeball-to-eyeball. Eye contact is very important to them, and they typically communicate only half-an-arm’s length apart. Touching is frequent too, and they’re given to Italian-style gesticulation. It’s all about sincerity, openness and building trust. Basically, the Romanians like to get up close and personal. The speakers at this month’s FirstTuesday gave us a close-up on this and various other aspects of Romania. First was the country’s Diplomatic Counsellor here, Dr Nicolae Iordan-Constantinescu, with some basic facts about his homeland: "Romania sat at the crossroads of three great empires — Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian — which marked our present and our history". One surprising trace left, not by those empires, but by 12th-century settlers from Luxembourg, was linguistic: "There is some danger that the ‘Lëtzebuerger Sprooch’ may disappear [here], but don’t worry, it can still be found in Transylvania, where there are a lot of people who still speak it". On Romania’s economy, he said unemployment is 4.5% (1 million people), salaries are low (monthly average of US$ 500-1,500 for a general manager, 300-900 for a specialized engineer, 100 for a bilingual secretary), but FDI in 2003 was US$ 10.4 billion,
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inflation is falling, and there has been 5% annual GDP growth since 2000. Dr Iordan proudly claimed that Romania’s ICT infrastructure "can compete with any in the world", citing the particular success of Romanian antivirus software firms. Mr Georges Calteux, the second speaker, of Luxembourg’s Service des Sites et Monuments Nationaux, talked about Luxembourg’s involvement in renovating historical sites in Romania, notably the ‘Maison de Luxembourg’, in the town of Sibiu, which accommodates a tourist office, language centre and Kulturcafé, and will house the Luxembourgish Consulate. He confirmed that Luxembourg’s heritage in Romania is strong, that he was indeed able to communicate in Lëtzebuergesch there, and highlighted another connection: fortifications in the town of Alba-Iulia are very similar to those in Luxembourg city, as both were built by Vauban in the XVIIth century.
Plenty of opportunity for Luxembourgish business Mr Bernard Elvinger was next at the mic: "I see great opportunities for Luxembourgish SMEs, financial institutions, handicrafts etc. in Romania". His company, Agrilux, has been operating successfully there for many
Photo: Olivier Minaire (Blitz)
FirstTuesday speakers encourage a rapprochement and provide insight into social etiquette, culture and doing business in Romania.
Georges Calteux, Clara Moraru, Me Bernard Elvinger and Dr Nicolae Iordan-Constantinescu.
years. He praised its business climate, saying there was "no lack of skilled labour, including IT staff". Frequent media focus on negative aspects — safety, corruption, poverty — is "exaggerated", he said. "I always feel welcome and perfectly safe there". He said his business hadn’t encountered any corruption and claimed that it was more of an issue for "big companies that come into Romania with pockets full of money and their own set of laws". He couldn’t deny the poverty issue, though. "There is no doubt that you will see poverty, owing to lack of
employment and wages that are way below those in Luxembourg", but he said salaries were rising steadily, contributing to increased quality of life. He also said Romania was "a very beautiful country for tourism, and great for fishing". Clara Moraru, Managing Director of Outsourcing Partners Ltd (and Romania’s unofficial ambassador to FirstTuesday networking), provided useful insights about the etiquette to observe when doing business in her country: "Romanians are very traditional; pride, honour and ‘saving face’ are important,
as are respectful behaviour, formal dress and punctuality". Once you’ve avoided all the social minefields and earned their respect, though, they are very friendly and generous, especially with their food and ‘tuic’ (wine), which flows copiously at business lunches that often last all day long. Incidentally, the Romanian expression for ‘Cheers!’ is ‘Noroc!’, but don’t be tempted to say ‘Prost!’ — it means ‘stupid’. Bear this in mind next time a Romanian is eyeballing you over a glass of tuic. ■ Neil Hearfield