Is Romania More Popular with Foreigners?
Many foreigners choose to come and live in Romania
Roxana Vasile, 07.08.2015, 15:38
Physicians, teachers, builders or farmers — more and more Romanians choose to go live and work abroad. The lack of work or the wish to have a better job pushes them to seek a better life abroad. According to the latest census data, going back to 2011, over 727,000 Romanians are supposed to have been abroad for more than a year, most of them in Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the UK. We are saying ‘supposed to’ because unofficial estimates claim the figure is three times higher, but even the authorities admit that an accurate count is out of reach.
The only certain information that exists shows that in Italy there are over one million Romanians, while Spain has a little less than a million. At the other end there are the foreigners who come to live here. There are plenty of Europeans, even Western Europeans, but also more and more South Americans, Arabs, Africans and Chinese. Why do they come here to stay? Is Romania a new migration target, especially after joining the EU in 2007? David Grau is a young Spanish man who won an Erasmus scholarship to study foreign languages in 2005-2006. He settled in Bucharest in 2008.
David Grau: “My friends were shocked that I was leaving a country where things were pretty decent for one where things were not that decent, as they had heard. Now it’s the other way around — they are asking me ‘So, over there in Romania, do they have jobs, is it easy to find something?’, because roles are reversed now, Romania receives quite a few Spaniards that are trying their luck.”
Yvonne Bonora came to Bucharest 10 years ago. She followed her husband, Just, who was already here, he’d come a year before to start a restaurant. At first they were shuttling between France and Romania. Then they decided to leave for good the sunny coasts of the Mediterranean to set up their own business: preparations made from 100% Romanian fruit.
Yvonne Bonora: “Together with my husband, we told ourselves that it wouldn’t be bad to make preserves, mostly for our friends, but then for customers… then the business took off. Now, most of our customers are hotels, who buy from us fruit preserve for breakfast or room service. We also supply some high end stores in Bucharest.”
Tom Rees is English. After specializing in gastronomy in Paris, he opened in the capital of Romania a bread and pastry shop: “Im responsible for the creation of new products, I have a team of pastry cooks, five in pastry and three in bakery. Everyone is Romanian, apart from myself. Before we opened the shop, we thought we would have a really hard time finding people to work, and that people arent serious. 90% of our staff have been very serious. OK, we had one or two problems and we had to change some, but, like I said, 80 to 90% of the people we found have been with us for almost a year now, if not more than a year. They are progressing every day, they enjoy what they do, they like to learn, and we reward them. The harder they work, the better we pay them.”
German teacher Matthias Thesing also sees the empty half of the cup, besides the full half: “Salaries are too small. Life is great, but you have to survive. I don’t have money back in Germany, as opposed to other foreigners who come to Romania and who draw money from their own countries. If you have to live from the income you make in Bucharest, it’s just about enough to pay a rent and buy food. But it very much depends on what you want from life. It is obvious that economic conditions are better in Germany, but expenses are greater there. I told myself that, if Romanians can make it over here, why couldn’t I? I like Romania, I feel close to its culture.”
These four expats reflect different approaches to accommodating in Romania. They have to do with life choices: work opportunities; organic food and tranquil villages; a better income to expense ratio than back in their countries of origin. Also, Bucharest ranks 159th out of 211 in the list of cities in which the living standard for expats is good. Foreigners who settle here give the most varied of reasons for their decision. On the one hand, there is the category of people seeking a better life — mostly from poor Asian and African countries.
On the other hand, there are the expats who hold management positions or have high education occupations. For them, Romania is one step up the professional ladder. According to 2014 data from the General Immigration Inspectorate of Romania, there are almost 100,000 foreigners who hold a residency permit, of whom 41,000 come from EU states and states from the European Economic Area. The highest number among them are Italians, followed by Moldovans and Turks. You can also find, however, Chinese, Hungarians, Germans, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, Norwegians, Venezuelans or Iraqis. Of course, in comparison to Romanians who choose to go live abroad, the number of expats who choose to live in Romania is much-much smaller. However, their number has become high enough to ask the question: Is Romania more popular with foreigners?
