Romania’s Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare told Euronews that he supports various measures being floated in the European Union to ensure the bloc can regain its competitive edge and boost investments.
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Nazare’s comments came days following an informal EU summit focused on finding new ways to revive the bloc’s stagnant economy. One of the proposals at the forefront of this meeting was a two-speed union that allows at least nine countries to join forces and adopt initiatives that could not otherwise be approved due to a lack of consensus.
Nazare threw his support behind this measure.
“Romania supports the Capital Markets package [aimed at creating a single, integrated market for capital], Romania supports the Saving and Investments union,” he said on Euronews’ 12 Minutes with.
“I have always said we need to accelerate this package. If this format (two-speed union) will accelerate some of the files that we already have in EcoFin (Economic and Financial Affairs Council), I think that’s a good idea,” he said.
This legal tool of enhanced cooperation rose to prominence last year after EU leaders decided to issue a €90 billion loan to Ukraine without the approval of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, a shift which seems to indicate leaders now favour speed over unanimity.
E6 could be ‘very good’ for Europe
Nazare backed the new elite club of the EU’s economies dubbed “the E6”, which hosts Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland.
This formation met for the second time on Monday on the sidelines of the Eurogroup meeting, this time to discuss how to speed up plans to integrate the bloc’s capital markets. But this spurred fears, including in Ireland, that smaller countries’ interests could be bulldozed.
“I think we should see what will eventually come out of the E6,” the Romanian minister said, adding that he discussed this with his French and German counterparts on the fringes of the EcoFin meeting on Tuesday.
“I don’t think they plan to leave anybody behind,” he said. “I think they planned to solve some of the critical issues that are on the table. And if they succeed, it’s a very good thing for Europe.”
Nazare also supported French-backed proposals for a “Made in Europe” strategy, which would introduce minimum European content requirements for goods produced locally, a topic also raised at last week’s summit.
“It (‘Made in Europe’) supports the strategic autonomy that we’re discussing,” he said. “I mean, this should be a European project. And this is the core of the project. […] Ever since the European Union was created, this was the entire idea behind it, that it should be one powerful, pan-European bloc.”
Asked whether this could damage Romanian and European relations with key trading partners like the United States, Nazare emphasised the importance of an investment-friendly environment in Europe.
“Now we have €300 billion of our savings that are invested abroad. If we ensure that these billions invested abroad are invested in Europe, this is very good for Europe,” he said. “So we don’t necessarily have to look at the competitiveness. We have to look at how to better use the savings that we already have.”
Another idea on the table in Brussels, also pushed by the French, is issuing common EU debt — Eurobonds — aimed at boosting investment in strategic sectors such as green tech, defence and security.
Nazare defended this proposal, pointing to the fact that the EU had used it in the past for NextGenEU (to reboot the European economy after the COVID-19 pandemic).
“I think this is aligned with our strategic priorities, and definitely it responds to the investment the European economy needs in certain strategic fields like AI, for instance,” he said.
The idea of using joint debt to boost competitiveness was also supported by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who authored an influential 2024 report on competitiveness. However, it is now facing stiff pushback from Germany and some of the generally frugal northern member states.
Romania’s sky-high deficit
Nazare also reflected on the fact that Romania has the highest budget deficit in the EU, arguing that the situation had improved in recent months.
“I would say that conditions related to Romania […] and the way Romania is perceived in the Council are much better now,” he said. “We gained trust. We not only met the deficit targets for 2025, but we overperformed by 0.7%.” The budget deficit target for 2026 is around 6%.
The coalition government led by Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan took tough measures in the second half of last year to bring down its budget deficit, including austerity packages which will put a 10% cut on the salary fund of public institutions. The move has sparked protests.
The country of almost 19 million is under intense pressure from the European Commission to bring the deficit below 3% of GDP. Because it currently exceeds this value, Romania is under the EU’s excessive deficit procedure (EDP), a mechanism designed to bring discipline to governments’ budgets.
“Our ambition regarding where we want to see the Romanian economy needs to change,” Nazare said. “To do this, of course, we need to exit the excessive deficit procedure, where we spent too much time in the last five years.” He said he hopes to exit this procedure by 2029 or 2030.
He added that exiting the procedure is also crucial for Romania’s progress toward adopting the euro.
“We cannot discuss the euro before we get out of the procedure,” he said. “So this is a prerequisite and this is very important project for Romania that fiscal discipline comes back, [that we put in place] measures to support the economy and to support growth.”
