Our entrepreneurship - much ado about nothing

The press has no news about factories that do not open, companies that do not expand, exports that do not grow, financing that does not close and listings that do not attract capital. It may miss some of these facts, but their repeated absence from the news is worth taking seriously.

Here lies the problem of Romanian entrepreneurship. There are companies, there are initiatives, there are programs, there are conferences. However, too few of them transform, often enough, into companies that grow so much that they become impossible to ignore.

In the last seven days analyzed before September 3, 2026, the search for news in the online press about Romanian entrepreneurs produced mostly specific rounds of financing, webinars, programs for small and medium-sized enterprises, exhibitions, podcasts, delegations and internationalization initiatives.

Among the few actual economic facts were the 1.6 million euro financing attracted by MeetGeek.ai and an announced investment of 500,000 euros by dvloper.ai. Documentation does not prove by itself the state of the entire Romanian entrepreneurship. But it shows how hard it is to find, in a typical week, the sequence of investments, expansions, acquisitions, exports and capital operations that would make entrepreneurship an economic presence that is impossible to avoid.

• Romania sees many entrepreneurs in the press

The paradox begins with the press itself. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor does not count articles published about entrepreneurs. It asks the population whether the media pays much attention to entrepreneurship. The difference is important: the indicator measures perceived visibility, not journalistic production.

In the GEM data for 2024, Romania had 79.1%, the second highest value among the 17 European Union countries included in the comparison, after Slovenia, with 84.2%. France had 71.6%, Hungary 64.9%, Germany 50.3%, Slovakia 48.3%, Spain 45.5%, and Poland 38.2%. The EU average was 62.3%. The data is reproduced from the national GEM Hungary report published in 2025.

A year earlier, the GEM comparison for 19 European societies gave the same general picture. Romania had 67.1% of the media attention given to entrepreneurship, compared to the European average of 63.9%. The UK had 78%, France 74.6%, Germany 54.4%, Slovakia 51.4%, Spain 46.3%, and Poland only 38.3%. The source is the GEM Poland 2024 report, published by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development based on GEM 2023 data.

Romania does not therefore suffer from the invisibility of entrepreneurial discourse. On the contrary, the entrepreneur is visible, the "ecosystem” is visible, programs are visible, public funding is visible. Conferences are often visible.

The problem begins when we ask what is behind this representation.

A Pikasa Analytics study published on May 21, 2026 provides additional insight, although it does not allow for specific individualization for Romania.

The company monitored 5,670,733 articles and posts in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Hungary in the first quarter of 2026.

Politics accounted for 37.3% of articles, foreign affairs 18.8%, and company-related material accounted for less than 0.3% of all monitored content.

The study combines several countries and includes social media, so the percentage cannot be attributed to Romania. But the difference between the political hubbub and the company's modest presence in the regional public conversation is hard to ignore.

• The language of success comes before success

Romanian public documents use a remarkably optimistic vocabulary. The National Strategy for Research, Innovation and Smart Specialization 2022-2027 states that science, innovation and "innovation entrepreneurship” will become "success models” for Romania's development. The state proposes an "attractive innovation ecosystem” that supports entrepreneurs and risk-taking. The National Research Authority also presents the objective of forming a "critical mass of innovative start-ups” that will create a "mature and functional entrepreneurial ecosystem”.

Formulas are not false by definition. They express objectives.

The problem arises when the objective, the program and the institution that administers it begin to take the place of the economic result in the discourse.

Even official documents are less optimistic than the language used to present them. The research strategy explicitly acknowledges that Romania does not yet have the critical mass of innovative firms necessary for a mature and functional entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The OECD goes further and puts numbers on this contradiction.

• Venture capital: 0.01% of GDP

In the OECD Economic Surveys: Romania 2026, published on March 16, 2026, the organization says that Romania has made important progress in economic convergence, but needs more innovation, technology adoption and firm dynamism.

The OECD notes that banking intermediation and the capital market remain underdeveloped, and non-banking financial instruments are limited.

Here are the figures that change the perspective.

Private capital invested in companies - private equity - represented only 0.04% of GDP in 2023.

Risk capital intended for young firms with growth potential - venture capital - represented 0.01% of GDP.

Translated from financial language: the capital available to transform a small company into a large company is almost microscopic compared to the size of the economy.

The OECD also says that Romania attracts a negligible share of regional venture capital investments, ranking far below Poland, Hungary or the Czech Republic.

Even more interesting is the route of public money. Only about 2% of Romanian small and medium-sized enterprises use European funds or subsidized loans, compared to 7% of large companies.

The OECD notes that the instruments exist, but they reach a very small proportion of the companies for which they were created.

Therefore, the existence of a program should not be confused with the existence of its effect.

• A third of companies are insufficiently capitalized

The European Commission arrives at the same problem, via a different route. In the Country Report - Romania 2026, published on 3 June 2026, the Commission shows that 10.2% of Romanian companies declared in 2025 that they were financially constrained, compared to the 6.1% average in the European Union. Approximately a third of Romanian companies had equity below the regulatory threshold, which reduces their ability to obtain credit.

Romanian companies financed 71% of their investments from domestic funds, compared to the 66% EU average. And 18% said that they had invested too little in the last three years, compared to 12% in the Union.

This is entrepreneurship seen without the inaugural ribbon. The entrepreneur exists, but his company often remains small. The company exists, but its capital is insufficient. The project exists, but the financing for growth is lacking.

Public financing exists, but the companies capable or willing to use it are few. This combination does not result in the absence of entrepreneurship.

This results in its difficulty in transforming itself into an autonomous economic power.

• The stock market offers an almost experimental test

The capital market allows for the verification of this problem in a place where discourse can be directly compared with the result.

In 2024, the value of listed shares in Romania represented approximately 10% of GDP, compared to 43% in the European Union. Corporate bonds represented 0.3% of GDP in Romania, compared to 11% in the EU, according to the OECD.

Romania also has the AeRO market, intended for small firms, young companies and growing enterprises.

The infrastructure is there. However, there are few companies, liquidity is low, many shares are inactive, and the participation of institutional investors is weak, the OECD notes in the report published on March 16, 2026.

The state tried to solve the problem with money. On June 6, 2024, the Bucharest Stock Exchange announced a program of the Ministry of Investments and European Projects worth 38.2 million euros, intended for private companies that wanted to list. A company could receive up to 300,000 euros for the main market and up to 70,000 euros for AeRO.

The result was almost ... didactic. In an interview published by BURSA on September 29, 2025, the Minister of Investments and European Projects, Dragoş Pîslaru, explained that the first call, worth 35 million euros, had produced three contracted projects, none of which had yet finalized the listing. The second call, worth 38 million euros, had received six projects.

The initial target had been 280 companies. The minister estimated that the program would reach seven to eight companies. Probable absorption: about 600,000-700,000 euros. Pîslaru characterized the program as a failure.

280 companies proposed.

Seven or eight obtained.

Here we no longer have an impression of entrepreneurship.

We have a measurement.

The program may have been poorly conceived.

The bureaucracy may have scared off companies.

The intermediaries may not have done their job.

The market may have provided insufficient incentives.

All explanations are worth investigating.

But none of them change the result: the state made tens of millions of euros available to push private companies towards the capital market and discovered that it had almost no one to push.

• The statistical entrepreneur and the economic entrepreneur

This is where the reading of international reports must also be corrected.

They say that Romania has entrepreneurial initiative.

It is true.

I say that there are many small and medium-sized enterprises.

It is true.

I say that there are programs, funds, strategies, incubators, accelerators and institutions.

And this is true.

But an economy is not transformed by the number of registered legal entities nor by the number of programs containing the word "entrepreneurship”.

It is transformed when a company with ten employees reaches a hundred.

When one with a hundred reaches a thousand.

When it starts exporting.

When it buys a competitor.

When it raises capital for a factory.

When it opens a branch abroad.

When it lists and uses investors' money for development.

When it forces the press to write about it because it has changed something in the economy.

This is the difference between statistical entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship as an economic force.

Romania has a lot of the first.

It still has too little of the second.

• Triumphalism fills the remaining empty space

Perhaps that is precisely why the discourse on entrepreneurship is so abundant.

Instead of the factory, the conference on factories appears.

Instead of capitalization, the program for capitalization appears.

Instead of internationalization, the delegation for internationalization appears.

Instead of the company that has grown, the "ecosystem that supports growth” appears.

Instead of the result, the institutional intention to produce it appears.

This does not mean that all conferences are useless or that all programs are meaningless forms.

It means that they must be judged by what they produce.

The OECD says on March 16, 2026 that the Romanian capital market and financial intermediation remain underdeveloped.

The European Commission says on June 3, 2026 that Romanian companies face financing constraints significantly higher than the EU average.

The Minister of Investments said on September 29, 2025 that a program initially intended for 280 companies will probably reach seven to eight.

These are the facts behind the vocabulary.

They do not describe a country lacking entrepreneurs.

They describe a country that produces entrepreneurs more easily than it produces strong companies.

And this is an enormous difference.

Until investments, expansions, acquisitions, exports, and listings multiply, Romanian entrepreneurship will continue to produce more representation than economic power.

When representation becomes more visible than what it represents, the setting begins to take the place of reality.