Strategy for Iasi

Mediation – The Future of Solving Commercial Disputes?

2010-03-03T12:03:00.000+01:00

A friend asked me to announce this event that will take place in Iasi.

Tired of losing money in court?

Invest two hours of your time to find out more about mediation, thus possibly saving 2 years of litigation.

The Regional Facilitation and Negotiation Centre kindly invites you to the

*Networking Coffee* on

“Mediation – The Future of Solving Commercial Disputes?”

The event is scheduled for Tuesday, the 09^th March, from 5pm – 7pm in the comfortable No. 8 Cafe (Strada T. Burada nr. 8) right in the center of Iasi.

In an open discussion, we would like to share our experiences and knowledge in mediation. The focus of the meeting is on “Solving Business Disputes”, (e.g. in Banking and Trade), where mediation, as a modern alternative to litigation, offers immense opportunities to save time and money. Furthermore, Commercial Mediation is a risk-management tool with high potentials, especially during this crisis!

Get in touch with us at the “Networking Coffee”. We would like to find out about your experiences of dealing with business disputes and where mediation can be helpful. Network with fellow Businessmen&-women, mediators and trainers in the non-committal atmosphere of “No. 8 Cafe”.

RFNC is a Non-Governmental-Organization, offering services, trainings and projects with an experience of over ten years in the conflict management field. Find out more on www.rfnc.ro

Please have a look at our poster for more details.

Are you interested in attending the *Networking Coffee* or do you have any questions?

We kindly ask to confirm your participation by e-mail Matthias@rfnc.ro or by phone +40 232 254502

Nationalism sucks! Why the 24th January Unification should not be celebrated in Iasi.

2010-01-23T20:42:00.001+01:00

Alexander John Cuza (or Alexandru Ioan Cuza) was a Moldavian-born Romanian politician who was the first ruler of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia between 1859 and 1866.

On 24th January 1859 Cuza became ruler of Wallachia after he was elected earlied as the ruler of Moldavia. This way Cuza achieved a de facto union of the two principalities. This is known as the "small" unification in Romanian culture. The "big" unification is the one from 1st December 1918 when Transylvania joined the Romanian Kingdom.

Every year in 24th January there are big festivities in Iasi. But there is no reason to celebrate. 1859 represents the beginning of a sad period for Iasi.

Few people know that in Wallachia most of the people wanted the unification, but in Moldavia a lot of people were opposing this unification (Nicolae Istrate, Gheorghe Asachi, Costache Negruzzi etc.). Their most important fears were confirmed by later events. They warned that Iasi might lose its importance as an effect of moving the capital of the newly formed country to Bucharest. They also feared that the entire region of Moldova would be less favored than the Southern part.

Before the events in 1859 Iasi was in many ways more developed than Bucharest. But since then most of the resources were directed towards Bucharest and this city also attracted most of the talents. Over the last 150 years Bucharest had a much faster development and Iasi was neglected.

Nationalism is a notion that can be very attractive at first sight, but most of the times it is deceiving and can lead people to do stupid things. It leads to unnecessary "unifications" and also to other ugly things like wars and ethnic conflicts (see the example of former Yugoslavia).

I would like to think that in 150 years the Romanian society evolved, but I'm sad to see that no big change has happened. Romanian people are still superficial. They are very sensitive to emotions that can manipulate and remain untouched by facts and reason.

There are still people who are willing to "sacrifice their lives" for their country... willing to fight stupid wars out of "nationalism" and "patriotism". There are enough people willing to do stupid things and hurt other humans, just because they believe in the "beautiful lies" of one doctrine or another. After all, Nazism, also known as National Socialism, had at its core nationalistic ideas.

Network suspected of smuggling women to Western Europe was smashed by police

2010-01-20T10:13:00.000+01:00

Reuters writes about the arrest of 30 people from the group known as Cordunenilor Gang, located mainly in Iasi, Romania

This is a network suspected of smuggling women to western Europe. They were operating in Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain and Ireland.

The group's victims were sexually exploited, obliged to become beggars or forced into pickpocket gangs in major European cities.

Romania aims to join the EU's Schengen zone of passport-free travel in 2011. Strengthening the fight against cross-border crime is one of the conditions for joining the area.

Election in Ukraine - first round is undecided. There will be a second round

2010-01-18T10:26:00.000+01:00

According to official results released on Monday, with 82 percent of the ballots counted, Viktor Yanukovich had 35.7 %, and Yulia Tymoshenko had 24.8 %.

The other candidates were far behind. Third place went to businessman Sergiy Tigipko with 13 % of the vote

The official turnout was 66.7 percent.

On Sunday night, both Yanukovich and Tymoshenko reached out to losing candidates for endorsements. A looming question is whether those more ideologically aligned with Yulia Tymoshenko will support her.

Despite warnings of large-scale election fraud in the days leading up to Sunday's vote, officials and election observers said the ballot seemed fair and orderly.

Elections in Ukraine - first round tomorrow 17 January

2010-01-16T14:57:00.000+01:00

A total of 18 candidates are contesting Sunday's election including President Viktor Yushchenko though he is regarded as having little chance of success.

Opinion polls and analysts say there will be no outright winner on Sunday. The candidate with the most chances seems to be Viktor Yanukovich, a former Prime Minister, and the candidate that lost the elections 5 years ago after the Orange Revolution. The second candidate seems to be Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

There are voices that say that Ukrainians need to choose between EU/NATO and Russia. But some other annalists say that no matter who wins Ukraine will continue to be somewhere in the middle because the citizens of this large country are very divided. In the Western and central regions of Ukraine there is strong support for stronger ties with EU and for no relations at all with Russia. People in the Eastern regions are more oriented towards Russia and they reject any possibility that Ukraine joins NATO or EU.

It is also my opinion that no matter who will win, this will not change the situation. Ukraine will not be able to make a clear decision towards any of the sides. This is a situation similar to the one in Moldova. With one exception: Ukraine already tried to get closer to the EU but this proved to be a failure. So I don't think that Ukraine will be ready any time soon to reject the ties with Russia and to try to get closer to Europe. Too many people are still suffering after the previous experiment. Let's just hope that Moldova's European experiment will prove to be more succesful.

Mihai Eminescu - Romanian National Poet. Born January 15 1850, 160 years ago

2010-01-15T11:44:00.000+01:00

Mihai Eminescu is often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. His poems span a large range of themes, from nature and love to hate and social commentary. Eminescu's poems have been translated in over 60 languages.

Read more about him on Wikipedia.

Mihai Eminescu is also a very present figure in Iasi. There are numerous statues of the poet in Iasi. The biggest Library in Iasi is Mihai Eminescu Cental Universitary Library. One of the most important parks in Iasi has as one of the main attractions Mihai Eminescu's linden tree.

First round of negotiations on Moldova-EU association agreement to be held in Chisinau today 12 January 2010

2010-01-12T09:02:00.000+01:00

The first round of negotiations on the Moldova-EU association agreement will be held in Chisinau today, 12 January.

The event will start with a plenary meeting, after which European and Moldovan experts will bring together into four working groups: 1. Political dialogue and the reforms, cooperation in the foreign policy and security fields; 2. Economic sector and financial cooperation; 3. Justice, freedom and security; 4. Inter-human contacts.

Natalia Gherman, deputy minister of foreign affairs and European integration, will represent Moldova at the talks.

The EU representative will be Gunnar Wiegand, head of the unit for Russia, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia of the Directorate General for External Relations of the European Commission.

Moldova's government said the treaty would enable Moldova to integrate with the EU politically and economically. They also expressed hope that this would lead to the liberalization of visa rules before 2012 and would be instrumental in setting up a free trade zone between Moldova and the EU.

Moldova is no longer threatened by communism. But now there are other problems

2010-01-09T18:13:00.004+01:00

Starting with the events in April 2009 Moldova changed the course of history. It all happened with the help of Facebook and Twitter.

Support Moldova on Facebook

Moldova is no longer threatened by communism. Moldova already took the first steps on the path of democracy.

But there are still many other problems.
Moldova is still a very poor state.
There are still a lot of Moldavians trying to make a living abroad.
The level of tolerance is very low.
The pro-Romanian extremists are often in conflict with the pro-Russians extremists.
Religious minorities are often attacked by the Christian Orthodox majority. The rights of sexual minorities are not even discussed.
Human trafficking is still a big issue.

In order to start the process of improving on all these issues, Moldova will continue to need international support.

There are already 5000 people in the "Support Moldova" community on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/support.moldova

If you are not already a member, please join us. Ans also please promote this page to your Facebook friends and suggest them to become members.

You can also follow Support Moldova on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Support_Moldova

1st Georgian airplane in last 1.5 years landed in Moscow today. Peace has been given a chance

2010-01-08T15:18:00.000+01:00

Airzena Airlines launched its first charter flight from Tbilisi to Moscow today. This was the airline's first flight after almost a year and a half pause.

The aircraft flew from Tbilisi International Airport at 12.30 and landed at Moscow's Domodedovo airport after two hours and twenty minutes.

Most of the tickets for today and the subsequent flights were sold-out.

The airline made a request to conduct sustained flights to Moscow, but the Russian Transport Ministry allowed conducting only three charter flights.

Having peace in the Eastern-European region is very important if we want to see an economic recovery.

Romania becomes first country to introduce junk-food tax

2010-01-08T10:43:00.000+01:00

A new tax on junk food products will be introduced as of March 2010 in Romania. This was initiated by the Health Ministry. The move appears to set a worldwide precedent.

Health Minister Attila Czeke said that he will introduce the fast-food tax in order to contribute to the country's health programmes.

The ministry justified its proposal by pointing out that more and more people in Europe suffer from obesity, increasing the risk of diabetes, hypertension and premature death.The proceeds will be considered income for the Health Ministry to spend on health programmes.

A fast-food tax, also referred to as a 'junk food tax' or 'Whopper tax', has been discussed for many years in the US but has never been introduced.

Iasi county has the second largest 2010 budget after Bucharest, but this is not as good as it seems

2010-01-07T12:09:00.000+01:00

The Romanian Parliament is discussing the national budget for 2010.

Iasi county is supposed to get 653 millions RON from the national budget. This is the second largest amount after Bucharest.

Things are good only at the surface. Because if we look deeper we will see that this is not as good as it seems.

A neighouring county, Suceava, will get 600 million RON, even if the population of Suceava is smaller. The per capita amount shows clearly that the budget for Iasi is not as big as it seems. For Iasi the per capita amount is 790 RON. In Suceava this amount is 845 RON.

Iasi. The City of the Beginnings

2010-01-02T16:14:00.000+01:00

The First Jewish Theatre in the World. The First School in Romanian. The First Monument. The First University. The First Sinagogue in Romania. All in Iasi. And more...

The student team of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University has won the great trophy of IMAGE CUP 2009

2009-12-29T14:19:00.000+01:00

It happened in July, so it's not a novelty anymore. But still it's an important information. And it should be promoted more. Iasi is a very important center on the IT world map.

Sytech Team, comprised of Adrian Buzgar, Calin Juravle and Andreas Resios – master students at the Computer Science Faculty of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University has won yesterday the great trophy of IMAGE CUP STUDENT COMPETITION 2009, held in Cairo – Egypt.

Cosmin Ilie, Economics student at our university has also won the first place in the IT Challenge section.

Alexandru Ioan Cuza University has also been represented by Cristina Despa and Ionut Cârjă, students at Computer Science Faculty and Design section competitors, and Valy Greavu, teacher at the Economics and Business Administration Faculty, as judge of the competition.

More on the UAIC website.

EU recognized Moldova's European integration aspirations

2009-12-22T10:59:00.000+01:00

The 11th meeting of the Moldova-EU cooperation council was held in Brussels on 21 December.

For the first time ever in Moldova's history, the participants in the meeting adopted a joint statement.

In the joint statement, the EU recognized Moldova's European integration aspirations.

The parties agreed to continue their efforts to bring the Republic of Moldova closer to the EU, acknowledging Moldova's European aspirations.
They confirmed that negotiations on an EU-Moldova Association Agreement will be launched in Chisinau on 12 January 2010.

At the same time, they agreed to strive to set up in 2010 a dialogue examining the conditions for visa-free travel of Moldovan citizens to the EU as a long-term goal, taking into account the EU Global Approach to Migration and keeping in mind that gradual steps towards full visa liberalisation would be taken provided that conditions for well-managed and secure mobility were in place.

Also the statement mentioned the launch of negotiations and specific steps to create a free trade zone.

SOS Rosia Montana

2009-12-21T16:15:00.000+01:00

Apparently there is no connection between Iasi in the Eastern part of Romania and Rosia Montana in the Western part of Romania.

But this is a serious issue and it's necessary that all the people that live in Romania or have any specific interest in Romania to stand together against the destruction caused by the proposed exploitation project in Rosia Montana.

Arguments for stopping the Gold Corporation of Rosia Montana project:

- It is bad for the long-term economical perspectives of the region.
- It will destroy the natural capital of the area.
- It violates several EU Directives concerning the environment and human rights.
- Destruction of archaeological remains of such value would be a cultural crime.

If you want to show your support for Rosia Montana you are invited to join the Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/Rosia.Montana

You can also sign a petition. The petition is only in Romanian for now: http://bit.ly/4B3sXH
Soon it will be translated into English.

UAIC - Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. Tools for Alumni to stay in touch

2009-12-20T23:41:00.000+01:00

The "Alexandru Ioan Cuza University" of Iasi is one of the most important universities in Romania.
The University of Iaşi, as it was named at first, is the first modern university in Romania, founded one year after the establishment of the Romanian state, by an 1860 decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza, under whom the former "Academia Mihaileana" was converted to a university. from Wikipedia

Each ear there are thousands of valuable people who graduate this University. The Alumni of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University could become one of the most interesting professional network in Romania. Unfortunately this is not the case now.

The social networking sites offer some opportunities for UAIC Alumni to get in touch with eachother. But the number of those who participate is still quite low.

There is a Facebook page for UAIC with more than 600 fans:
http://www.facebook.com/Iasi.UAIC

And there is also a Linkedin Group with more than 500 members:
Linkedin Group

Fell free to join any of these and also invite your friends.

Iasi Linkedin - thousands of opportunities

2009-12-19T20:18:00.000+01:00

Linkedin is the leading professional network in the world. It offers countless opportunities to connect with professionals that share your interests.

Right now there are about 9.000 people on Linkedin that have any mention of Iasi in their profile: http://bit.ly/search-iasi

Linkedin does not allow you to contact these people directly unless you are members of the same group. This is why I created the group IASI on Linkedin. It has now over 1.000 members: http://bit.ly/Iasi-Link. If you will join this group you will be able to send messages to any of these 1.000 people interested in Iasi.

So feel free to join the group (if you haven't already) and also to promote it to your connections.

Owner of ERA park in Iasi has its accounts frozen

2009-12-19T19:23:00.000+01:00

Ermes Holding, held by Cypriot group Omilos, owner of ERA Shopping City retail park in Iasi, has had access to its bank deposits blocked due to a 250,000 Euro debt, according to ZF.

The sales decline and difficulties in collecting rent are causing increasingly more conflicts between shopping center owners and banks, retailers, and even construction companies, which materialize in insolvency filings and frozen accounts, as is the case of the ERA project in Iasi.

Google maps street view for Romania (including Iasi) and CEE

2009-01-23T16:50:00.004+01:00

Well, it's not actually Google maps.

It is a similar service that it's in Beta version - Norc.

It also has versions for: Austria, Czeach Republic, Poland, Slovakia.

It is still pretty slow and not very easy to use but I think that it's still much much better than nothing.

So you should try it: www.norc.ro

Foreigners in Romania

2009-01-19T16:40:00.003+01:00

I just got an e-mail with an announcement from Romanian Immigration Office. It contains some data about the foreigners living in Romania.

There are only 64789 registered foreigners living in Romania.

Out of them, only 17619 are from EU countries, and 47170 are from non-EU countries.

Out of the EU citizens living in Romania 4366 are Italian, 3268 German and 2298 French.

Most of the foreigners living in Romania are from Moldova (13820), Turkey (8011) and China (5545).

The highest number of foreigners is found in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj, Timis and Ilfov counties.

The most common purpose of their residence in Romania is because they are married to Romanian citizens (13086 cases) and because they are studying in Romania (12820 cases).

Out of this data it seems that still Romania is not a very attractive destination for foreign people. 65.000 is a very small number compared to the population of Romania. I am sure that the Baltic countries have more foreigners living there even if their population is 10 times smaller than Romania.

And the main reason to worry, as I see it, is that people that come to Romania to study do not continue to work in Romania. This is a very big loss. After investing time and money in their education, Romania should to everything possible to keep the best graduates. But after all, there are Romanians that leave the country after graduation, so why should be different for the foreigners who study here?

Direct Flights Budapest - Iasi

2009-01-15T15:13:00.002+01:00

Hungarian airlines Malev will launch scheduled flights from Budapest to Iasi starting in March 2009.

I found the news on a Hngarian website.

I think that this is a very good news as it offers the opportunity to people from the NE region of Romania to travel almost everywhere in the world with connection in Budapest. The added value is that the Ferihegy airport from Budapest is better connected to important global destinations than Otopeni airport. And besides this, most of the flights from Budapest are cheaper than the ones from Bucharest. These are facts that are well known for years by the people living in western part of Romania.

Of course Malev is the second international airline that operates from Iasi airport, after Austrian airlines. And of course we have the Tarom flights.

I am looking forward for the moment when either Ryanair or EasyJet (second option would be Wizzair, Blueair, SkyEurope) will also decide to operate flights from Iasi.

Monica Macovei - EU Woman of the Year 2008

2009-01-14T13:53:00.002+01:00

Former minister of Justice in Romania, Monica Macovei, is the EU Woman of the Year 2008.

She currently works for the UK government as a consultant on justice reforms in EU candidate countries. But it was her efforts in rooting out political corruption in Romania which won her the plaudits of an international jury. She was widely credited with implementing justice reforms that allowed Romania to enter the European Union (EU) on January 1, 2007.

Presenting her with the award, a gold broche, Pottering, EU Parliament´s President, said she and the other candidates were a "symbol and model for women everywhere" and that she could be proud of her achievements.

Dedicating the prize to "all Romanians who believe in the rule of law", she said, "Tackling corruption has been the most challenging thing in my life but I will continue because I believe in zero corruption."

Unfortunately I believe that corruption is still an important problem in Romania. And there should be increased efforts to solve the problem of corruption. There is still a lot of corruption both at national (central) level as well as at local (regional) level.

Iasi - Orizont 2020

2008-12-04T16:12:00.004+01:00

Last week I connected on Liknedin with Henk Procé. He was one of the members of the Dutch Consultancy team that developed the Strategic Development Plan for Iasi "Orizont 2020" in 2007.

At the time when this plan was intensely discussed in 2007 I was not aware of it. But now, one year after it was launched, it finally came to my attention.

I took the time to read some articles that were written in the last quarter of 2007 about this project:

Ziarul de Iasi - S-au ales cele 10 proiecte de dezvoltare a Iasului (Romanian)
Newsiasi - Brandul "Iasi, oras al inspiratiei", contestat inca de la aprobare (Romanian)

The opinions in the media were mainly critical, but I think that this had mainly to do with the politic factors. The war between the political parties before the local elections that were organized in 2008.

I also started reading the document. You can find it in English on the website of the City Hall: Iasi Regional Development Strategy 2020.

My personal opinion is that the plan is quite good and the suggested priorities are quite close to what I think that should be done for Iasi.

Unfortunately I didn't find a lot of information about the follow-up on this plan.

After I finish reading the whole document I will share some more information in future posts.

Iasi - is it known in Europe?

2008-12-04T09:33:00.003+01:00

I think that Iasi is pretty well known by Romanian-speaking people. Most of the people from Romania and Moldova know Iasi and have a pretty good image about the city. But if one starts asking people from other countries about Iasi, only a few ever heard of Iasi and know something about it.

The main reason for this is that Iasi never had a strategy in promoting itself in other countries. There are some examples of cities from Eastern Europe that are very well known even if they are not the capital-city: Krakow, Brno, Wroklaw, Odessa. Even some cities in Romania, like Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu and Timisoara, are starting to be known in the whole Europe. Each one of them attracts a big number of tourist, are part of large infrastructure projects and are attract important foreign investments.

I think that the first step for being known outside the borders in Romania would be to have available information in English (or other European languages) about Iasi. At the begining of this year most of the websites about Iasi were only in Romanian. Now I see that there are already some important sites that have the English/French versions as well.

I will name only 2 examples now:

1. Iasi City Hall
http://www.primaria-iasi.ro/content.aspx?lang=EN&item=0
Of course, there are still some things that are not in place. For example on the website of the City Hall there are some pages: "Page not yet published in this language", as example the Public Relations page. Or there are pages that are in Romanian even on the Englis version, as example the Contact page

2. Iasi city tourism
http://www.turism-iasi.ro/index.php?id=101
Browsing this site I found out that Iasi is a city that had an important contribution to the feminist movement in Romania. I always knew that part of the charm of the city comes from the women that are there :)
The first surgeon woman in Romania Mara Trancu-Rainer (1875-1950) – was a member of the Romanian Academy of Medicine and honourary member of the Biology Society in Bucharest.
The first lady lawyer in Romania Ella Negruzzi (1876-1948). To her name is connected the manifestation for social-political rights to women and also the fight of the Romanian intellectuals against fascism and war, for freedom and the country’s independence.

New start

2008-12-03T19:22:00.004+01:00

After a long period of inactivity I decided to focus again on this project - Strategy for Iasi.

So expect new regular postings starting this week.

I also decided to try to use the new services from Google Friend Connect.

I am still researching about this tool, but if everything works out fine, I could add some social networking features to the site. And this could only be good.

Make sure you sign in. You can use your Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account.

Thank you!

Cezar