When Sumona Oancea walks through the long Unirii Avenue, in the center of Bucharest, going to the Ministry of Innovation, close to the impressing building of the House of the People, where she works with the management of Structural Funds, she thinks about the most recent evolution of the City, of Romania and globally of all Eastern Europe. In a more and more complex Europe, focused in the new challenge of the Treaty of Lisbon, is Bucharest already the real Paris of the East?
In a time of uncertainty and uncontrolled global financial crisis, Eastern Europe must focus more and more its attention on launching the basis for a New Competitiveness Strategy centered in the drivers of high growth rate and civil society capacity of creating and developing added value for the global international markets. Countries like Romania must develop from now on a new “active contract” with the challenge of the future, based on an effective partnership between the State, the economic and social actors and the “contribution of difference” done by all the foreign companies that are able to create investments and incorporate talents.
The basis for this New Economic Strategy, centered in a new  vision of leadership,  must be clear:

- Develop active policies towards the participation of SME in global networks
- Reinforcing the role of “Clusters of Innovation” as Centers of Excellence for new areas of knowledge (biotech, renewables energies, new communications)
- Reinventing the role of Universities as active players in the development of a culture of competitiveness among civil society
- Enabling the States to progressively eliminate obstacles to investment and innovation

The location of the EIT (European Institute for Technology) in Budapest,  is a good example of this new strategic vision for a new agenda of excellence in Eastern Europe. The Hungarian government took the decision of doing a strong political and finantial investment towards this new European MIT that represents a strong personnel engagement of the European Authorities. This is an example that must be understood by the other Eastern European countries, so that the focus on the attraction of Foreign Direct Investment must be the “right reason”  to fix all the talents that have in this part of the world one of the most high-rate educations.
The role of the structural funds in this new Development Agenda is essential. The financial contributions that come from Brussels must be seen as “additional enablers” in the implementation of the modern structures that are necessary to the development of these countries. The most recent experience in the adequate use of the money that comes from the European Commission has not a very positive balance – the strong signs of corruption and structural incapacity of establishing real strategic models for the future of the economy and society are making the “challenge of the change” almost impossible to be fulfilled. That is why the role of a more engaged and qualified civil society in the consolidation of the modernization of Eastern Europe is an act of urgency. The  political authorities of these countries must more than ever understand that the challenge of the future is a global collaborative permanent process where all must be involved. We need Eastern Europe to be a new area of future. We need Romania to be an effective Open Society. We need Bucharest to be in fact the Paris of the East.

Francisco Jaime Quesado is the General Manager of the Innovation and Knowledge Society in Portugal, a public agency with the mission of coordinating the policies for Information Society and mobilizing it through dissemination, qualification and research activities. It operates within the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education