Page 35 - Nearshoring to Romania

In its aim of improving the economic cooperation between the Netherlands and Romania, the NRCC has made
an analysis of the Romanian business climate. The NRCC salutes, for example, the excellent Internet and
mobile communication services in Romania and calls for the country to remain in the frontline of Internet and
mobile bandwidth and speed.

At the same time the NRCC calls for the improvement of a number of key aspects that would make Romania a
more attractive nearshoring destination. Among them:
ØThe improvement of the infrastructure network;
ØGrowing stability with regard to legislation and regulations;
ØA substantially better absorption of EU funds;
These, however, are long-term objectives that will take a substantial amount of concrete action on the part of
the Government.

In this white paper, the NRCC would like to focus on 7 very concrete and relatively easy to implement
measures that can become 'quick wins' to immediately improve the business climate for nearshoring to
Romania.

1.Request Universities to make internships obligatory part of curriculum
In its current form, the practical work as required by most Universities in Romania fails to achieve its
goal of improving the professional capabilities of students. The“practică de specialitate”is
unfortunately sometimes treated merely as a formality, and, not surprisingly, often times done in
mockery.
By contrast, the contents and requirements of aninternship (as done in the Netherlands for example)
make such internships much more effective in improving the organizational skills, written
communication skills and punctuality of students.
Romanian Universities have to be stimulated to work more closely with businesses, and also to adapt
their curricula to the needs of business. An important step would be to make (business-oriented)
internships an integral and obligatory part of curriculum. The old-fashioned “practică de
specialitate”concepthas to modernise and improve so as to suit the needs of today's job market.

2.Take away legal boundaries for part time contracts
Romanian legislation is not very suited for part-time contracts. Part-time contracts are possible, but for
instance a 50% contract is interpreted as working 4 hours per day (every day),rather than working 2.5
days per week (cumulated). Clarifying this legal conundrum would make part-time contracts much
more appealing to both employers and prospective employees. It would, for example, incentivize
students to get a job while studying.

3.Accept English as an official language for HR documents
The Romanian authorities currently require that all Human Resources related documents are in
Romanian (for example: contracts, job descriptions, evaluations, internal regulations). Since
authorized translations require the involvement of an authorized translator, and are thus time-
consuming and tedious, accepting English as an official language for HR documents would greatly
hasten the bureaucracy attached to business.

Nearshoring to Romania, NRCC 2013