What the newspapers say: June 13, 2008

Luxury brands and future investments in Romania make the news on Friday. And, a bit more important than that, the „luxury brains” that left Romania to become science stars are described in a long article published by Cotidianul, with their desires, needs and their longing for a home that needs to change before it can welcome them back.

Few Romanians are rich, but they are increasingly rich, so it doesn’t come as a surprise to see all luxury brands rushing to open stores in Romania. The latest brand that came to the market, with a few months later than first announced, was Louis Vuitton. The problem is that they packed the Firemen Monument in front of the Marriott hotel in a giant Vuitton case, to make their presence obvious.

The gesture stirred a lot of discontent and authorities now look for solutions to withdraw the authorization, Evenimentul Zilei reads. Anyway, before all the bureaucratic steps are taken, some citizens managed to express their anger. The luxury chest was vandalized on Thursday evening. Soon after, an economic newspaper put a funeral garland dedicated to the firemen in front of the statue.

Gandul makes a parallel count of the luxury sales in Romania, emphasizing that Vuitton did not bring its most expensive products, the 3,000 euro bag being the most luxurious item for the moment (prices range from 300 to 5,000 euro in other stores). On the other hand, Vertu and Ferrari are a hit. An 80,000 euro Vertu phone was already orders and 60 Ferrari are already on the road, even though the official store opened only a couple of month ago. The waiting list for Ferrari is covered until 2009, same Gandul informs.

In business: the former governor of the Cluj county says that Peugeot is interested in opening a factory in the Jucu industrial park, where Nokia built its latest production facility. According to the former official, Peugeot cat all other countries from its short list of potential destinations. Cotidianul claims that the Peugeot – Citroen group may invest 600,000,000 euro.

„The banished generation chases God’s particle and midget stars in Western countries” is the title in Cotidianul, which publishes a wide article on the Romanian scientists who left the country to become top researchers abroad.

Aurora Simionescu, candidate for a doctor’s degree at the Max Planck institute, detected, as a world’s first, a piece of the Universe’s missing matter. Adrian Buzatu is in search of the Higgs bosone, „God’s particle”. Marius Dan studies the midget stars and black holes in astrophysics. Marin Bodale applies scanning techniques to biology, geology and medicine. Octavian Iercan is just one of the Romanian IT experts that made it abroad. And so on. Most of them would return to Romania, but for the same working conditions, for the same wage and the same laboratories. „First, Romania must change, show us that it is possible and that it deserves us, then the researchers will return”, says Adrian Buzatu, as a conclusion of the general attitude.