On Thursday, 1 October 2026, President Nicușor Dan spoke at the ninth RePatriot “Top 100 Romanians Everywhere” gala, hosted at Cotroceni Palace. He thanked guests who had travelled long distances and congratulated the organisers for a format that brings diaspora entrepreneurs together with the ecosystem at home.

His message to Romanians abroad was to “try Romania,” including the health system. With shortcomings and dysfunctions, he said, the country had progressed in 20 years. The appeal is not a repatriation policy and does not guarantee jobs, housing or school places.

He treated the question “why would I come home?” as an individual choice in a free world: some return, others stay and cooperate from abroad. He cited fears heard in communities: retiring at home but fearing healthcare; returning but uncertain about children’s schools.

He said medical equipment is no longer what it was two decades ago and that some doctors trained in foreign clinics stayed abroad while others came back. On education he was explicit: there are good schools and very weak schools, at both pre-university and university level. What matters, he added, is a realistic picture of where Romania stands today, not a slogan.

He also addressed the public–private relationship. Private business is, in his phrasing, the engine of the economy, and entrepreneurship “the engine of the engine”; synergy, he acknowledged, has been insufficient. As a recent example he cited state-aid schemes being steered toward the trade deficit.

He restated an appeal made a year earlier: if the administration stays in routine and does not formalise frameworks, business and professional associations can bring draft laws. Nobody takes from Parliament the power to legislate, and nobody takes from the government the executive power, he said. A lack of administrative capacity is not a surrender of authority.

He pledged openness to partnership among public authorities, business, academia and the diaspora. Return still depends on incomes, services and predictable rules — obstacles the speech names without resolving that evening. This article covers the 1 October address, not a government programme to subsidise return.

Image: Cris Coman, Cotroceni Palace (archive, 2013), public domain, Wikimedia Commons; not a photograph from the 2026 RePatriot gala.

Source consulted: Nicușor Dan: Îndemnul meu pentru Diaspora - testați România, a progresat în 20 de ani — AGERPRES.