Romania could be a tourism paradise and provide food for exports in 2030, but it will have a smaller population – 16 million - with more elderly than today, believes Romanian President Traian Basescu (in picture).

“Romania in 2030 will supply food for export, because we have a huge agricultural potential, which is not yet capitalized. A country that will be a paradise for tourism if we manage to keep our 30 percent virgin forests and the more than 6,000 bears we have in the Carpathians,” Basescu has said during a conference organized by The Economist in Bucharest.

“A country with a smaller population, of about 16 million, with an aged population, and here maybe we can find solutions to increase the birth rate, not necessarily financial solutions. It would also be a country where we'd take the TGV from Constanta to Paris, then passing through the English Channel to reach London and shop in the City,” Basescu went on.

The President would like to see Romania as a country where Romanians come back from the places where they are no longer welcome, like UK, Germany of France. “Where they irresponsibility see us as gipsies. Where they characterize us as a people of thieves, uneducated, forgetting we fly on planes invented by Henri Coanda. A country that would regain respect, because Europe will have time to get to know it,” he concluded.

editor@romania-insider.com