Florin Spataru, Minister of Economy: “We can’t have any sustainable development without innovation and R&D”

“Recently we received some great news. Romania is going to finance three projects in the microelectronics sector but related to the automotive industry. There is a very fine line between R&D and innovation and economic development.

We had several meetings at the Ministry of Economy, talking about automotive and the whole supply chain, finding ways to support this sector and helping it moving forward. The automotive industry plays a significant part in the whole GDP of the country,” Florin Spataru, Minister of Economy, said during Automotive R&D Power Breakfast organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“There are a lot of challenges in the automotive industry, and we understand that this sector needs attention from the Ministry of Economy. There are a lot of changes related to new legislation, such as Euro 7, but also from a digitalization, automation, and e-mobility perspective.

Romania needs to attract new investors in the automotive industry, support the current investors and invest in R&D. We are in the final stages of preparing a state aid scheme for companies who are going to produce battery cells for the automotive sector. We can’t have any sustainable development without innovation and R&D.

We have to create innovation hubs among the universities, and the students could have the opportunity to experience new projects and technologies.

We would like to tackle some activities where Romania is having trade deficit. In this regard, we launched the battery state aid scheme with 600 million Euro.

We want to launch a program for industrialization by licensing. What does this mean? Buying a licence, producing in Romania under that licence, and the state will support the acquisition of the licence     and also support the innovation part.”