[mriet]

It's kind of weird that Romania has done so well, given that amount of turmoil in Romanian politics and Romania in general in the last 20 years.

Basically, it went up for Romania because they got access to the EU market (in terms of both exports and remittances) starting in 2007 and that helped, _despite_ everything else that went on. So.. kind of a win for Romania and the EU, I guess.

[petre]

Except Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, so they have only been for 17 years in the union.

[M95D]

Smart young people left for rich EU countries: doctors, engineers, even construction workers left. It took time until the old generation that remained behind retired and now we have the effects of that: better paid jobs.

When I started working as a doctor in 2007, my salary was ~150 euro/month. It is now ~2000 euro/month. Some of it is experience/seniority, but most of it is just jobs competition from richer EU countries.