Swiss voted "yes"

Today has been a pretty important day for us, Romanians as we have finally been recognized as EU member country. This means that we are moved from the category "other countries" into the category "new EU member countries" when it comes to being granted a residence or a work permit. 

This is a good news, since it shows that Swiss acknowledge the fact that they are in need of work force. However, the result is to be seen in the light of an important specification: should the treaty have not been agreed on, all the other treaties regarding the free movement of persons between the EU and Switzerland would have been null. 

However, the the Neuer Zürcher Zeitung says: 

"Für manche Rumänen steht das anbrechende Zeitalter der Freizügigkeit innerhalb der EU und auch der Schweiz angesichts der akuten Image-Probleme ihres Landes unter einem schlechten Stern. Solche Überlegungen trüben ihre Freude über den Ausgang der Volksabstimmung in der Schweiz." (am 9. Februar 2009)

This paragraph draws attention to the importance of country brand. What is known today about Romania in the EU and in Switzerland can be summarized under the following statement: poor, third world country, where people have difficulties even to afford enough food, gipsy, dark skinned, and on the more positive side, lower salary demand in EU standards, hard working. 

However, very little or nothing is known about the country. Dividing on the EU citizen's imagination, Romania could be drawn as:

- a slavic land, having a language similar to Russian

- rich in natural beauty and virgin lands

But we know that Romania is more than this. So, we'd better not wait for a national branding campaign to be launched on CNN and use the word of mouth to advertise our country.