Dan Sucu took to Sopot a line he already uses in Bucharest: cohesion policy was one of Europe's best investments, and Romania still needs it. He did not ask for charity. He asked not to shut the tap just as the country has reached 80% of average EU GDP per head, from less than half two decades ago.

The European Forum for New Ideas, 14-16 October, put Concordia's president next to employers from the East. In the same window the confederation opened a permanent Brussels office, led by Adelina Dabu, and signed a memorandum with Poland's Lewiatan. The voice no longer travels only through translated notes. It has an address next to the rooms that write the 2028-2034 budget.

Sucu said Poland shows what the region can do. Romania started as a cheap assembly base. Today machinery and equipment are 47% of goods exports, and IT, transport and engineering pull services. Cohesion paid for roads, rail and utilities that serve those plants. It was never charity, he said: the money came back to Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam through the single market.

The next step, in his reading, is the shift from "made in Romania" to "created in Romania": products, services and technology with a margin, not only lines that assemble for someone else. Cohesion and competitiveness are not two agendas. One builds capacity, the other puts it on the market. Without European champions, he added, Europe enters the global contest with firms that are too small.

The Brussels office is not a shop-window symbol. Sucu tied it to invoices: energy, capital, hiring. Dabu has to carry the files before the rules close: cohesion in the MFF, a competitiveness fund that eastern firms can still reach, less red tape for SMEs, power prices a factory can pay. Concordia also wants to keep the OECD file alive through Business at OECD.

The Lewiatan memo covers labour, skills, innovation, energy, trade and security. Poland already talks about competitiveness as policy, not slogan. Romania joins that conversation later, but with an economy that is no longer only the cheap workshop of the 2000s.

None of this is law and none of it is a cheque. It is an employers' position at a forum and at an office opening. How much of it enters the EU budget will be decided in Brussels, not in the applause at Sopot.

Image: 瑞丽江的河水, the Berlaymont, Brussels, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; Commission HQ, not Concordia's office in October 2026.

Sources consulted: Romanian business has a voice in Brussels and Poland - ZF; Concordia opens a permanent Brussels office - Concordia.