Balkan promise

Over the past year Romania has staged a surprise recovery, thanks to careful political stewardship and workers’ willingness to accept swingeing austerity measures. However, there is still much work to be done if the country is to fulfil its potential. Lucy Fitzgeorge-Parker reports.

ROMANIANS MIGHT BE forgiven for feeling just a touch of schadenfreude this summer. After all, according to the received wisdom of late 2008, theirs was supposed to be the big Balkan economy that came to grief – the one that failed to get a grip on public spending, that suffered from soaring unemployment and a barely controllable current-account deficit, that saw its debt repeatedly downgraded and came to the brink of default.

Instead, it is Greece that is staring into the abyss while Romania is well on the way to recovery.

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