Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Development and Public Administration Vasile Dincu on Monday said Romania has to protect its rural civilization because it is Europe’s last of its kind and for that a national strategy is needed.
“We have Europe’s last rural civilisation and we should protect it. Europe feels it and tries to do so with us, but we do not accept it, it is as if we were not hearing. (…) In Romania, there are rather foreigners who warn us that our villages are dying, that a civilisation is dying. (…) It is a matter of culture that eludes us, a cultural dimension that eludes us, namely of self-organising and self-developing. (…) I believe that first of all we have to care about own country. That is the most important thing and it is not sloganeering,” Dincu told a debate on the integrated development of Romania’s countryside organised by the Representation of the European Commission in Romania.
He added that saving the rural civilisation of Romania is first of all incumbent on Romanians because there is no European experience in the area.
“We need a new strategy that should be national because global strategies are hard to implement in Romania. Since we are Europe’s last rural civilisation, it is clear that there is no European model for it. (…) We are made aware by these debate platforms that everybody uses to tries and wake us up to do it. The European programmes of this year and the next financial year are generally based on making the community conceive its own development, and that is a very good thing that Europe puts at our disposal but we do not know how to use,” added Dincu. More…