Pawel Wieczorek, Exact x Forestall Group: “We need flexibility in the employment regulations in Romania”

“The demographic is not really working for us anymore, neither here in Romania, neither anywhere else in Europe. If nothing changes in the upcoming years, Romania’s population will shrink from 19 million to around 16 million because, as we speak, around 130.000 people annually leave the country permanently. This is due to three main reasons: immigration, the negative birth rate and low life expectancy.

Romania is not an exception unfortunately. All Europe is there, Poland included, and we will most likely shrink our population with 10 million people in the upcoming 15 years,” Pawel Wieczorek, Vice President Exact x Forestall Group said during Automotive Forum 2025 organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

Key statements:

• The reason why I’m sharing this is the fact we all face the situation of today where the volatile production level is a huge challenge to every company employing hundreds of thousands of people, but also for us working in the shadow for every one of you.

• We need flexibility in the employment regulations in Romania. For example, in Poland, out of maybe 3,000 people that we send to work every day, around 85 percent of them are students. Joining forces with the universities to train people is a fantastic thing to do. In Poland, we want to give the students an opportunity of a flexible employment, meaning whenever they have time or willingness to work, they have the privilege and chance to learn in the real-life world and industry.

• Therefore, when they finish their studies, we all benefit from having people already trained towards the requirements of the real sector. So, we’re able to ‘produce’ the people able to step into the market, but we need also legislative measures from the Government to make it more flexible to be able to employ these students on a super flexible basis.

• We need to have maybe some incentives from the Government to activate certain social groups, which is working beautifully in Turkiye for example.

• We have to invest in our people, we have to digitalize, we have to move forward with being more innovative, better optimized and better prepared for the upcoming challenges and changes. Flexibility, diversity and innovation are essential.