ROMANIA'(tm)S FIRST FIVE YEARS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION. A SHORT ASSESSMENT

It'(tm)s been more than 5 years since our country has joined the European Union, on January the 1st 2007. It'(tm)s been a long road, as fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria had not been an easy task. But was it all worth it? Are we better off today, five years after? Did we know how to take advantage of European Union membership? Did we know what to do and how to do it, in order to benefit from (all) the advantages of the Single Market? These are some questions we will try to answer in this paper. In this paper, we will present data regarding: the evolution of Romania'(tm)s foreign trade, overall, as well as with the rest of the European Union countries; the evolution of Romania'(tm)s economic growth, in comparison with European Union'(tm)s average economic growth; the evolution of foreign direct investments in Romania; the absorption degree of structural and cohesion funds, in comparison with other countries of the European Union. We will analyze these data, and we will make comparisons between Romania and the European Union, in order to see the similarity between Romania'(tm)s evolution and EU'(tm)s evolution. We will also analyze the structural and cohesion funds absorption degree, in comparison with other European Union countries. Finally, we will try to assess whether we knew how to take advantage of our European Union membership, as being member implies both advantages and disadvantages. Knowing how to fully benefit from the advantages and how to diminish the disadvantages is the winning strategy. Did Romania know how to maximize its advantages? As we will see in the conclusions of this paper, the answers to these questions are not always in our advantage. There are still some lessons to be learned, especially regarding the absorption of structural and cohesion funds, and attracting foreign direct investments.