President Iohannis in Paris: We oscillate between a burnt cake and a very delicious one

President Klaus Iohannis believes that we’ll not make celebrate the Centennial properly due to the problems in the country. The head of state also thinks that Romania has oscillated during the past 100 years between „burnt cake and a very delicious one”.

Klaus Iohannis made these statements at Romania’s Embassy in Paris on Saturday during an event dedicate to our country’s centennial. President Iohannis also said that Romania must find a solution so that youngsters who are studying abroad should get involved in the political and social life of the country.

“We have all we need. We have educated people, possibilities, the desire of society, what probably needs to be studied is how we bring it all together, which is the catalyst. It’s like we’re preparing to make a very good cake and we have all the ingredients on the table: flour, sugar, nuts, butter (…) the most important step is to put all the ingredients together so that it yields a delicious cake and not something burnt which is embarrassing. We are oscillating between a burnt case and very delicious cake. This is the evolution of Romania in the past century. We have gone through extremely good periods for Romania, obviously the Great Union is the first extremely positive of the series, then we lost ourselves a bit, we went through the hardest dictatorships, with terrible results, we came back with a very positive event in December ’89 and since then we’re leading the path that was defined by all generations as a European and Euro-Atlantic path and I believe in some fields we are up to the challenge, but there is still a lot to be done,” President Iohannis replied when asked a question how could youngsters studying abroad be convinced to not leave the country anymore.

The head of state added we need to create a more stable, predictable framework leading to meritocracy.

“We have valuable youngsters and you are a living proof. We have very valuable youngsters in the country as well. The thing that saddens me every time is that those in the country would come here, but you would not return and then the role of politicians is to analyse why it is so and what framework must be created in order to have the exchange. (…) We need a more stable, predictable, more solid framework in Romania, we must go towards something that I and many others have called meritocracy, so that the youngsters who come back can make a simple calculation – what career they would have, what chances they’d have in their career, what stability they would have in their career, what chances they would have to significantly progress in that career and then, of course,   some of you would start thinking if it would not be good idea to return to the country. We are in the middle of the process,” Klaus Iohannis pointed out.

The event hosted by the Romanin embassy in Paris  has been dedicated to the Romanian contribution to the development of science and technology in the year of the Centennial of the Greater Union and has been also attended by Professor Gerard Mourou, a Nobel Prize laureate, as well as Romanian students, graduate students and Ph.D. students in the region of Paris involved in scientific research.