On my last visit to Romania, standing in the security line at the airport, I witnessed the final moments of a goodbye, a mother tightly hugging her grown-up daughter, while the father looked on, fidgeting. ‘Never mind, never mind, it’s okay’, he said. ‘It’s better where she’s going, it’s much better.’
Everybody seems to be leaving Romania. This exodus is driven by a basic need – there’s nothing inherently wrong with this eastern European country, no wars or other emergencies, but there are also no jobs. There is, moreover, a general sense of inertia fuelled by bad governance and entrenched poverty.
