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Re-Phanariotisation, Internal Habsburg Model, Inclusive Modernisation: Three Scenarios for 2050

Historical Similarities Hits: 227 20 minutes read

Article 10 of 10 — ‘The Technological Twilight of the Romanian Lands’

Previous articles: 1–9.

I. A Blacksmith’s Workshop in Botoșani, March 2026

The forge has been closed since 2019. The large steel door, once painted a shiny blue, is now rusted through to the iron beneath. The lock is new—placed there by the master’s eldest son, who visits on certain Sundays to check that everything is as his father left it. Inside, in the semi-darkness, the scent of burnt coal and mineral oil, of iron beaten red-hot, still lingers six years after the last fire was lit—a smell the son recognises in any corner of the world he visits, just as others might recognise the perfume of their mother or their first love.

The master—his father—had passed away in October 2018, at the age of 74, in a cardiology hospital in Iași, his hands resting on the sheet, fingers already thin, no longer resembling those that, five decades earlier, had forged railings for town halls, horseshoes for racehorses, master keys for banks, and once, a control rod for a Fiat tractor for which spare parts could no longer be found on the Romanian market in 1985. He had built the forge from nothing, in a courtyard on the outskirts of Botoșani, with an anvil inherited from his own father, two hammers, a bellows, a pedal-operated forge (later, a three-phase current network he had dragged himself from the street pole), and a determination that his son, now 43, finds impossible to replicate.

This evening, in March 2026, the son unlocks the door with a new key and steps inside. He has his four-year-old son with him. The boy—Ștefan, after his grandfather—looks at everything with wide eyes. He is more often in big cities—Cluj, Bucharest, once Munich, where his father had a three-month software contract for a Danish firm—than in workshops like this. The forge is, for him, a strange room full of objects he has no words to name.

‘Dad, what’s that?’

The father looks. On the large anvil, covered with a black cloth that was once white, lies a hammer with a beech handle, last used by the master in the summer of 2018.

‘It’s a hammer, son. For beating iron.’

‘Why isn’t iron being beaten?’

The father does not answer immediately. In the yard, on a stick tied to the aluminium gate, a stork can be seen against the cloudy sky of Moldavia, preparing to take off. Somewhere on Cuza Vodă Street in Botoșani, a car radio plays South American music. The master, if he were here, would have been beating iron until dark. The son, who is now a programmer at a firm with a Danish contract, wonders—as he does every time he visits this workshop—who could still, in this town, do what his father did.

He lifts the boy into his arms. He takes him to the anvil. He places the small hand carefully on the cold metal.

‘This is iron. Your grandpa used to beat it here. With the hammer. He made things out of it—gates, fences, keys, horseshoes. Tomorrow, maybe, a man will come to reopen the workshop. Or maybe he won’t. We don’t know yet.’

The boy pulls his hand back. The anvil is cold.

‘Do you want to beat it too, Dad?’

The father smiles. ‘I don’t know, son. I don’t know.’

This is the opening scene of the final article in the series. Not in Bucharest, not in the Phanar, not in Reșița, not in Nevyansk. But in a workshop closed for three seasons, in March 2026, in a town in Moldavia. With an anvil waiting. With a boy who does not know the names of things. With a father who has a contract with a Danish firm but no answer to his child’s question.

This article is dedicated to the future. Not because the future can be predicted—it cannot—but because, after 245 years of history covered in the previous nine articles, we have an obligation to ask: what comes next? Three scenarios for 2050. Three possible directions. With the signals of each already visible in 2026, if we know how to see them.

II. Where We Are in March 2026: An Honest Inventory

Before the scenarios, an inventory. Who are we, as a country, in this year, 2026? Not who we imagine ourselves to be—but what the data shows.

Demographics. Romania’s official population recorded in the 2021 census was 19.05 million. The real figure—taking into account emigration to the EU—is somewhere between 18 and 18.5 million on the territory, plus 4–5 million Romanians in the active European diaspora. In 1990, at the beginning of the transition, we had 23.2 million. We have lost, in 36 years, approximately 5 million souls. Demographically, we are a country in slow but constant contraction.

Economy. Romania’s GDP in 2025 was approximately €380 billion. At purchasing power parity, GDP per capita is around 78% of the EU average (compared to 26% in 1995). Real convergence, but with a pace that has slowed in the last five years.

Economic structure. Services—65% of GDP. Industry—22%. Agriculture—4%. The rest, construction and extractive industries. In industry, the major sectors are: automotive (Dacia-Renault, plus sub-assemblies for German firms), petrochemicals (Petrom-OMV, Rompetrol-KMG), steel (Liberty Galați, in chronic difficulty), consumer electronics and components, software (Bitdefender, UiPath, Endava, plus tens of thousands of developers working for external clients).

Software—an essential observation. The Romanian IT sector has grown, in the last fifteen years, from approximately 1% of GDP to over 7% in 2024. Over 200,000 active developers. Companies with international valuations—UiPath (over $30 billion at its 2021 IPO, later corrected), Bitdefender, Elrond/MultiversX. Romanian freelancers for clients in the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands.

And here—attention—begins the first lizard of the article. The Romanian IT sector is, in its dominant structure, a services sector. Over 80% of its revenue comes from outsourced contracts. We produce code for American, British, and Dutch firms. We do not produce, with rare exceptions (Bitdefender in security, UiPath in RPA, MultiversX in blockchain), Romanian products that compete on global markets.

This is exactly what we described in Article 4 about the density of urban crafts in 1780. Real density, sophisticated, functional—but not paradigmatic. The ‘silversmiths’ of the 21st century. Well-paid per capita, professionally respected, European in their training. But not the industrial Sheffield.

Education. A school system with PISA results below the EU average (approximately 425 in mathematics, 428 in reading, compared to the EU average of 490). Almost half of 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate. Universities—47 state universities, plus dozens of private ones. Graduates—100,000 annually. But with a persistent problem: the best leave. It is estimated that over 40% of graduates from the major Polytechnic universities work, five years after graduation, outside Romania.

Infrastructure. 950 km of motorway (compared to the 2,500 km repeatedly promised over the last two decades). An ageing railway network (approximately the same kilometres as in 1938). Functional airports—Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, Iași. Internet—among the fastest averages in the EU (a paradox of post-communism: digital infrastructure has advanced where physical infrastructure has stagnated).

Technological sovereignty. Approximately zero sovereign data centres at scale. Zero semiconductor factories. Zero major Romanian-owned electric vehicle manufacturers. One world-class research institute (ELI-NP in Măgurele, the world’s most powerful laser). A few promising startups (Hyperion, Elrond) that could be lost in terms of ownership or could remain. This is where we stand.

A mixed picture. Density, but not paradigm. Convergence, but with a slowing pace. Talent, but with external drain. Partial infrastructure, but also islands of excellence. A state that functions, but with institutions that are eroding. A society that is neither failed nor advanced—somewhere in the middle, in an equilibrium that could go in three different directions.

And those three directions are the three scenarios of this article.

III. Scenario 1: Re-Phanariotisation

The most probable scenario, by inertia.

Definition. Re-Phanariotisation means that, in the decades 2026–2050, Romania consolidates its role as the ‘digital back-office’ of Western economies. Software development services for American and German firms. Business process outsourcing services (BPO—call centres, offshored accounting, offshored HR). Logistics services for European trade. A few enclaves of manufacturing for foreign firms (Dacia in Pitești, Continental in Timișoara, Bosch in Cluj). Some agriculture, less and less Romanian-owned.

Benefits—for those who have the qualifications. A senior programmer in Bucharest with a contract for a Danish firm can earn, in 2026, the equivalent of €40–60,000 per year. A BPO project manager in Cluj—€30–40,000. Salaries comparable to Berlin, superior to Vienna for some functions. A class of ‘digital Phanariotes’—polyglots, European, well-paid, frequent travellers to festivals, conferences, escapes to Lisbon or Reykjavík—emerges and consolidates.

The cost—for the rest. The population that does not have the qualifications (the majority, approximately 75% of the active population) remains in weak local services (retail, cleaning, care), subsistence agriculture, or disguised unemployment. The salary gap between Bucharest and the rest deepens. The gap between Bucharest and the rest of the EU closes for the elite, opens for the rest.

Signals of the scenario in 2026:

  • The emigration of doctors continues at a rate of 3–4,000 per year (compared to 2,500 medical graduates annually).

  • The BPO/IT sector grows in turnover, but profit margins decline (competition with India, the Philippines, Bulgaria).

  • German firms producing in Romania expand their operations—but only in the good locations (Cluj, Timișoara, Brașov).

  • Public policy prioritises the ‘business environment’ (facilitation for foreign investors), not active industrial policy.

  • Consumer culture (new malls, gastronomic festivals, cheap low-cost travel) replaces the lack of a collective project.

Historical analogy. The Phanar in 1785. A refined elite, polyglot, well-paid for dragoman services to the centre of power (then the Porte, now Silicon Valley). The rest, in subsistence. A sophisticated periphery, but structurally dependent.

What happens by 2050 in this scenario. Romania remains in the EU, with the permanent status of a ‘member country but a poorer one.’ GDP per capita reaches 90–95% of the EU average (favoured by population decline, not by productivity growth). An upper class in Bucharest, Cluj, and Timișoara lives like average Western elites. The rest of the country empties demographically (projections indicate 15–16 million inhabitants in 2050). Entire villages in Northern Moldavia disappear. Culture becomes, for the most part, a commodified consumer culture, with limited domestic production (a literary market with small print runs; a cinema that wins festival awards; an academic elite with excellence in a few fields).

It is not a disaster, in absolute terms. It is, rather, a stabilisation at the periphery. The same fate that struck post-2010 Greece, Portugal in the 1990s–2000s, Spain in similar decades. A ‘normal’ European periphery.

It is the most probable scenario by inertia. Without coordinated action, structural forces push us there. Not because someone ‘wants evil.’ But because it is the path of least effort—for foreign investors, for the local elite, for citizens who individually choose to emigrate.

IV. Scenario 2: The Internal Habsburg Model

The most painful scenario—because it deepens what is already visible.

Definition. The internal Habsburg model means that, in the decades 2026–2050, Romania increasingly becomes a country of two speeds. The West—Cluj, Timișoara, Sibiu, Oradea, Arad, Brașov—develops sustainedly, with economies comparable to western Poland or northern Czechia. The rest of the country—Moldavia, rural Wallachia, Oltenia, Bărăgan—stagnates or regresses. Two worlds form, within a single state, that look at each other with growing distance.

This takes us directly back to Article 3 of the series. In 1780, Habsburg Banat had furnaces, postal schedules, a cadastre, Swabian colonists with five-year contracts. Wallachia and Moldavia, 160 km away, had Phanariote tribute, dirt roads, corvée labour. Today, the five-hour drive between Cluj and Botoșani already measures an economic, cultural, and demographic fault line that ‘the same country’ makes harder to bear, not easier.

2026 figures that suggest the scenario. GDP per capita of Cluj County: 145% of the national average. GDP per capita of Botoșani County: 62%. Youth unemployment rate in Timișoara: below 5%. Youth unemployment rate in Vaslui: over 15%. Number of startups funded with over €1 million in 2024: Cluj and Bucharest, over 60. The rest of the country, under 5.

What the scenario looks like by 2050:

  • Cluj becomes the ‘Silicon Valley’ of South-Eastern Europe. Population growing (from 320,000 in 2024 to an estimated 500,000 in 2050). University integrated into European research circuits. Romanian startups with a global presence (a few become unicorns). Average salaries above the EU average.

  • Timișoara consolidates its industrial role. Continental, Bosch, plus new Romanian firms in automotive and renewable energy. Approaching the level of Graz or Bratislava.

  • Bucharest remains the administrative capital, with a mixed economy—financial services, consulting, high-end IT. Slow but solid growth.

  • Iași tries to catch the wave, with the Polytechnic and the University of Medicine as anchors. It has a chance, but depends on geographical connections that are lacking.

  • Rural Moldavia, rural Wallachia, Oltenia—depopulation. Abandoned villages. Public services retreating. Lonely elderly. Children who travel forty kilometres to a school.

Demographic signs already showing the scenario. In 2023, Constanța County had more deaths than births, with a deficit of 4,500. Vaslui County—a deficit of 3,200. Botoșani—a deficit of 3,500. And these figures are not pandemic anomalies. They are a trend.

Historical analogy. Habsburg Banat in 1780 and Phanariote Wallachia. Only this time, the ‘border’ is no longer in the Carpathians. It is inside the same country. Cluj-Napoca becomes the new Reșița. Botoșani becomes the new Wallachia of Grigore Ghica, executed in 1777.

Political consequences. A state with two speeds is a state that is difficult to govern. Parties that win the electorate in Cluj and Timișoara cannot ignore the electorate in Vaslui and Botoșani—and vice versa. Politics becomes a permanent negotiation between the two Romanias, with compromises that satisfy no one.

It is the scenario that can happen through the combination of inertia (Scenario 1) with the partial success of western Romania. It is neither the worst nor the best. It is, perhaps, the most probable if we only look at current trends.

V. Scenario 3: Post-1821 Inclusive Modernisation

The least probable scenario, but also the most important to imagine.

Definition. Inclusive modernisation means a repetition, in a contemporary key, of the 1821–1918 arc we described in Article 9. A generation of coherent political will—25 to 30 years of constant reforms, over two or three parliamentary terms—which changes the economic and institutional structure in an irreversible way. Not just economic growth. But structural change.

Contemporary precedents: South Korea between 1962 and 1988. Estonia between 1991 and 2010. Ireland between 1985 and 2005. Nicaragua never. These are rare cases. But they are cases.

Ingredients of the scenario:

First—active industrial policy. The Romanian state deliberately chooses two or three paradigm sectors (not 20, not 5—two or three) and protects, funds, and builds the ecosystem for them. Possible candidates: (a) electric batteries (Europe is in desperate need, we have lithium, cobalt available regionally), (b) mid-range semiconductors (not TSMC, but manufacturers for electric vehicles, which Europe lacks dramatically), (c) sovereign computing infrastructure and AI (European data centres, cloud services for the European public sector that does not want American dependence).

Second—massive investment in human capital. A 15-year plan that brings the Romanian school system to the current Finnish level. Serious university reform. Systematic recruitment of the diaspora (the return of at least 500,000 Romanians with Western training). Competitive salaries for teachers (which means: double or triple the current level, with severe selection).

Third—serious physical infrastructure. 5,000 km of motorway actually built in 15 years. High-speed rail network between cities. Modernised ports in Constanța, Brăila, Galați. Real regional airports. An urban planning scheme that connects the country.

Fourth—technological sovereignty in key sectors. Five sovereign data centres. A world-class AI university (perhaps a consortium of Cluj-Bucharest-Iași). A Romanian cybersecurity agency at the level of ANSSI (France) or BSI (Germany). A sovereign risk fund with €10–15 billion for paradigm Romanian startups.

Fifth—a solid rule-of-law state. Independent justice. Professional anti-corruption, not political. Regulated competition. Public institutions with quality personnel. None of this without a serious state framework.

The cost. Approximately 2% of GDP per year, allocated coherently, for 25 years. That is a total sum of approximately €200 billion. A large budget, but achievable through serious fiscal policy and the absorption of European funds.

Benefits by 2050:

  • GDP per capita: 130–140% of the EU average (i.e., the current level of Belgium or Sweden).

  • Population stabilised at 17–18 million (with net emigration reversed after 2035).

  • One global technological cluster (one, not twenty)—probably in applied AI or electric batteries.

  • 5–10 Romanian companies in the European top 500. Today we have, approximately, two.

  • Reduction of the rural-urban gap through infrastructure and real public services.

  • Culture with serious domestic production—not just commodified consumption.

Why is it improbable? Because it requires two things we have in limited quantities: (a) coherent political will for 25 years, which surpasses the 4-year electoral cycles; (b) collective trust that it is worth investing in the future. Both have been eroded in recent decades by the succession of governments, endemic corruption, and repeated disappointments.

Why is it important to imagine it anyway? Because, as Dinicu Golescu said (Article 8), nothing can begin without first admitting that it needs to be done. And the concrete imagination of an alternative is the first serious political step.

VI. What We Already Have, What Needs to Be Built

A realistic inventory of the resources available in 2026 for Scenario 3, if we want to follow it.

What we have:

  • Talent. Global-level programmers, good engineers, excellent doctors, scientists in major Western laboratories (500,000–1,000,000 Romanians professionally active abroad).

  • Some good universities. Politehnica University of Bucharest, Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași, Polytechnic University of Timișoara—at a European average level, with punctual excellences.

  • Geographical location. Gateway to Ukraine, Moldavia, the Balkans, the Black Sea. In a world where logistics is becoming geopolitical, it matters.

  • Energy resources. Declining oil, but significant natural gas reserves (Black Sea). Great potential for renewables (sun, wind, water).

  • Stable financial system. Romanian banks, mostly foreign but EU-regulated, have passed the 2008–2010 crisis, then the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine, without collapse.

  • EU funds. Access to approximately €80 billion until 2027 (PNRR + Multiannual Financial Framework). The rest depends on absorption.

What needs to be built:

  • A rebuilt pre-university education system. This is the main urgency. Without children who finish high school with solid training, there is no technological future.

  • Advanced manufacturing capacity. Batteries, semiconductors, components for renewable energies—none of these are produced at scale in Romania today.

  • An autonomous entrepreneurial ecosystem. Today, Romanian startups are, for the most part, imitators of American models, with exits through external acquisition. We need to build a generation that retains local ownership.

  • Professional press and an informed civil society. The Romanian public sphere in 2026 is dominated by political noise and commercial agendas disguised as journalism. Serious politics cannot be done without an informed public.

The difference between the ‘what we have’ list and the ‘what needs to be built’ list is enormous. But not insurmountable. South Korea in 1962 had a GDP per capita comparable to Somalia. Estonia in 1991 was ruined by decades of Soviet rule. Both made the leap in a generation. With will. With patience. With institutions that worked.

VII. Signals to Watch Until 2035

How will we know which scenario we are in? Some indicators to monitor.

Signals of accelerated re-Phanariotisation (Scenario 1):

  • The share of the IT/BPO sector in GDP grows beyond 12% by 2030, but profit margins fall below 15%.

  • Doctor emigration remains above 3,000/year.

  • Research and development investment remains below 1% of GDP (EU average: 2.3%).

  • No coherent industrial policy appears at the government level.

  • The salary gap between Bucharest and the rest of the country grows beyond 2:1.

Signals of the internal Habsburg model (Scenario 2):

  • The population of the counties in the North-East decreases by over 15% by 2035.

  • Cluj and Timișoara surpass Bucharest in average salary.

  • Public services (schools, hospitals, post offices) withdraw from villages with populations below 500.

  • Internal migration (Moldavia → west) becomes dominant compared to external migration.

  • Politics becomes geographically polarised (parties ‘of the west’ vs. parties ‘of the east/south’).

Signals of inclusive modernisation (Scenario 3):

  • A concrete industrial policy is adopted and implemented starting in 2027–2028.

  • At least three major industrial facilities with cutting-edge technology (batteries, semiconductors, or equivalent) are built by 2030.

  • The education system enters a serious reform (not rhetorical), with real investment increases.

  • The diaspora begins to return net (by 2030–2032).

  • The GDP of poor counties grows faster than the GDP of rich counties (internal convergence).

The most important are the public policy indicators—if no coherent government decisions appear in the period 2026–2030, Scenario 3 becomes practically impossible (you cannot build a compressed modernisation in 20 years; you need at least 25–30). The window is narrow.

VIII. What Each Can Do—Beyond Politics

A final word about individual action. Because public policy is important, but not sufficient. Modernisation, if it comes, will be made not only by governments, but by millions of small personal decisions.

Entrepreneurs. The choice to build a company with a global product of their own, not just services for external clients. The choice to keep the headquarters, the team, and the ownership in Romania even when the exit offer is tempting. The choice to invest in employees (training, competitive salaries, a serious professional framework)—not in cost arbitrage.

Professionals. The choice to stay when leaving is easier. Or the choice to return, if they have left, with the accumulated experience. The choice to do serious work in local institutions—even when the system frustrates. The choice to teach, to mentor, to build local professional networks.

Citizens, in general. The choice to vote informed, not emotionally. The choice to demand institutional transparency. The choice to support professional journalism (even with €5/month for a subscription). The choice to attend local public meetings—and to monitor them. The choice not to accept normalised corruption.

Parents. The choice to educate children for curiosity and autonomy, not just for school success. The choice to teach children that work creates value—and that the value created here can remain here. The choice to teach them a history that is neither victimising nor falsified.

Grandparents, if they are still here. The choice to tell stories—not about what was bad in the past, but about what was done concretely. How a forge worked. How a house was built. How a community gathered. Cultural continuity is made through transmitted stories, not through museums.

Each of these is a small choice. Together, the small choices make the scenarios. Neither Scenario 1 nor Scenario 3 comes ‘by chance.’ It comes through repeated decisions.

IX. Conclusion: The Anvil and the Hammer

The son closes the forge. The boy asks, at the door, if anyone will come back. ‘Maybe,’ says the father. ‘I don’t know, Ștefan. But the anvil remains. The hammer remains. We’ll find iron, if it’s needed.’

They walk towards the house on Cuza Vodă Street. The bells of Uspenia Church toll for Vespers. A neighbour greets them from the other side, with a plastic bag in one hand and a dog sniffing the cold air in the other. The boy asks if he can have polenta with cheese for dinner. The father says yes. And on the way, holding the boy’s hand, the father thinks about what he will leave his son.

Not the money. Not the house. Not the Western contacts.

An answer to the question: who can still, in this town, in this country, in this world, do what his grandfather did? Who can still transform matter into utility? Who can still teach his son a complete craft, with eyes, with hands, with voice? Who can still say, at the end of a day: I made this with my own hands, it is in its place, it will remain?

This series, dear reader, was written for this question. The previous nine articles tried to show how we got here—through a century of Phanariotism, through geopolitics between empires, through the absence of continuity frameworks, through compressed but incomplete modernisation. Not as guilt to be assigned. As a structure to be understood. And this article, the last one, tried to show where we could go.

Conclusion in Three Questions.

First: Is the future determined? No. The three scenarios—re-Phanariotisation, internal Habsburg model, inclusive modernisation—are all possible. The choice between them is not made at an ‘abstract historical level.’ It is made through political, entrepreneurial, and individual decisions, repeated daily. So far, we are at a moment where all three remain open.

Second: What should we do if we want Scenario 3? We have said: active industrial policy in two or three paradigm sectors; massive investment in human capital; serious physical infrastructure; punctual technological sovereignty; a solid rule-of-law state. Plus, at the individual level, a thousand small daily decisions, in millions of lives, that add up to a collective meaning.

Third—for the reader who has read this far. What does he or she do tomorrow? Not what they expect from the government. Not what they hope from Europe. What he or she does, personally, tomorrow morning when they wake up. An article does not answer this question. Not even ten articles. The answer is given by us, each of us, with our lives. Or we do not give it—and then Scenario 1 is realised, through the absence of choice.

An anvil waits, in March 2026, in a courtyard on the outskirts of Botoșani. It is cold. It is covered with a black cloth. It waits. It does not ask who will come. It is not in a hurry. It has stood for six years. It may stand longer. It may not.

And the four-year-old boy, when he is forty, will judge—if there is still someone left to judge—whether our generation, the one that lived between 2000 and 2050, managed to do something with what it inherited. Or whether it left everything, like a closed forge, with a new lock, waiting for a master who may never come.

We are not judged by England. Not by the Phanar. Not by Reșița. Not by Nevyansk. Not by Padeș. We are judged only by our children.

And they—if they are still on this side of the border, if we still have a side of the border to be on—will know whether we chose well.

End of series.

Selected Bibliography

  • Bogdan Murgescu, România și Europa. Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500–2010) (Romania and Europe: The Accumulation of Economic Gaps, 1500–2010), Polirom, 2010: archive.org.

  • Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism. What Killed Capitalism, Bodley Head, 2023: yanisvaroufakis.eu.

  • Cory Doctorow, essay series on enshittification: pluralistic.net.

  • Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, PublicAffairs, 2019.

  • Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, multiple editions.

  • Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade, Princeton University Press, 2017.

  • Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, Anthem Press, 2002.

  • Institutul Național de Statistică, Demographic and Economic Reports 2024–2025: insse.ro.

  • Eurostat, Real GDP per capita, PPS-based convergence: ec.europa.eu/eurostat.

  • European Commission, Recovery and Resilience Facility (PNRR)—Romania’s national documents: ec.europa.eu.

Postscript: Acknowledgements and Continuity

The series ‘The Technological Twilight of the Romanian Lands’ was published in ten episodes, at two-week intervals, between the autumn of 2025 and the spring of 2026, distributed on the network of four websites of ABSOLUT WEB EXPERT SRL: absolutweb.ro, servicii-web-alex.com, petrucojocaru.ro, cojocarupetru.info.

Thanks to the historians I have repeatedly cited—Bogdan Murgescu, Neagu Djuvara, Ariadna Camariano-Cioran, Christine Philliou, Viorel Panaite—without whose work this series would have been impossible.

Thanks to the readers who kept the series open, who commented, who corrected, who shared. A small but real community.

Thanks, finally, to all those who, in their small forges—real or metaphorical—continue to beat the iron. Without them, any discussion of modernisation remains abstract.

Anyone who wants to continue the conversation can find me at petrucojocaru.ro or at cojocarupetru.info or through the contact form of the agency absolutweb.ro.

And if someone, somewhere, in a town of Moldavia or Greater Romania, decides to reopen a forge—literally or metaphorically—please send me word. I will come with pleasure to see the first fire.