Victor Ponta

We can only restore faith in government if the state itself becomes an efficient, effective and transparent ally of the people. Bureaucratic inefficiencies, abuses of power and the misappropriation of public funds must end.

Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.

We feel no isolation. But, having said that, I want to emphasise in particular that we do not want to go to extremes and abandon the European and American directions in our foreign economic cooperation.

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.