Romania will become the most relevant country in Europe in terms of SpaceX infrastructure, Vice-President of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications of Romania (ANCOM) Pavel Popescu said on June 16 at the Romania Digital Forum.

“SpaceX has already invested tens of millions – I think it is close to one hundred million euros – in Romania. I can announce that Romania will become the most relevant country in terms of SpaceX infrastructure in Europe. (…) Amazon is coming to Romania in the space sector. We have the same openness for Amazon, the same openness for AST, the same openness for Eutelsat and the same openness for any company that wants to do what SpaceX does in Romania. We have entered an era where ‘too much talk, too much regulation’ will give us headaches. Do not let your children talk to AI agents. Talk to them as we used to talk to our grandparents, because this is a very serious matter. Do not copy and paste documents into AI models. It does not matter whether you are bureaucrats, in the private sector, prosecutors, judges…,” Popescu said.

According to the official, Romania must stop considering itself a second-tier country, because “that is what Western Europe told us.”

“We need to hold our heads high and stop this continuous self-flagellation about Romania being a second-tier country, as Western Europe told us. And this is not an anti-European speech, it is a pragmatic one. If you go into Romanian state institutions, you will see regulations and directives of extraordinary absurdity. We must have the courage to speak out publicly and say that these things are happening. And I will give a concrete example, without going into details: Europe is now facing a crucial choice regarding how communications will be carried out in the low Earth orbit satellite sector. So we will ‘shift’, we will move to low orbit satellites in an incredible way, primarily as a backup. To be clear for everyone, Ukraine is surviving today – in terms of civilian and military communications – thanks to low orbit satellites. It just so happens that these satellites, 95% of the global infrastructure, belong to Musk and SpaceX,” the ANCOM head said.

He underscored that the ANCOM is the only regulator in the world which, publicly mandated by a former Romanian prime minister as well as by the presidential administration, has taken responsibility for stating publicly that what Europe is doing by blocking, on a purely political criterion, the only company in the world that, in the event of war, a climate catastrophe or an earthquake, can save the world in terms of communications, is “wrong.”

The ANCOM vice-president said that the models and infrastructures of those who have already invested will begin to produce results.

According to him, in the coming months, the models and infrastructures already financed will become operational and start producing, becoming part of everyday life. Popecu argued that this sovereign approach should not be shaped by fear of displeasing Europe, noting that decisions were too often blocked with the claim that “the Commission said so”. He recalled that, in 2020, during the pandemic, the European Commission had told Romania it could no longer use its own gas — a message that initially caused alarm, but that Romania later realized it was actually in a leading position and is now the EU’s largest gas producer.

Industrial development in the context of the technological revolution and the competitiveness of Romanian companies in the digital era are two of the topics to addressed on June 16 at the eighth edition of the Romania Digital Forum, organised by Financial Intelligence.