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Poorest country in Europe
May. 4th, 2016 10:15 pmWe are currently visiting Moldova. It is the poorest country in Europe (GDP per capita). The second poorest is Ukraine and the gap even between Ukraine and Moldova is still huge, Ukraine is more than two times richer than Moldova. Moldova is a real outlier in Europe. Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia are also more then twice as rich as Moldova. Romania and Bulgaria are almost four times richer than Moldova.
Moldova is almost fifteen times poorer than Norway (where my mother is from), which is the richest country in Europe, not considering the off-shorey micro-nations of Monaco, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg. Almost fourteen/thirteen times poorer than US/Canada and almost ten times poorer than Denmark (where my dad is from). Here are the twelve richest countries in Europe.
More than half of Moldovans (the "Romanian part") are EU citizens. Their grandparents were stripped of their Romanian citizenship after Moldova was annexed by Russia after WWII and Romania gave them their citizenship back after the iron curtain fell. They can work and live legally anywhere in the EU, which many of them do. Almost every family has one or two members working abroad. Italy, Greece, Ireland, France and Germany are the most popular choices. Spain and Portugal used to be popular choices too but are much less so in the last couple of years. Our host worked as an audit manager at Deloitte in London for a couple of years.
Many Moldovan kids live with their parents abroad and go to school in Italy, England, France and come over to visit their grandparents during the summer holidays. They speak Romanian with their grandparents and their parents but Italian, French, English, etc between themselves. It is really funny to see a Moldovan barefoot kid looking after the sheep in a Moldovan village breaking out into a thick Scottish accent all of a sudden.
The majority of those who are not EU citizens are Russians and Ukrainians and they usually have Russian passports and a lot of them work in Moscow, St Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia, which is almost five times richer than Moldova. There are also quite a lot of Moldovan Jews in the capital who have Israeli passports but live and do business in Moldova.
Moldova is almost fifteen times poorer than Norway (where my mother is from), which is the richest country in Europe, not considering the off-shorey micro-nations of Monaco, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg. Almost fourteen/thirteen times poorer than US/Canada and almost ten times poorer than Denmark (where my dad is from). Here are the twelve richest countries in Europe.
More than half of Moldovans (the "Romanian part") are EU citizens. Their grandparents were stripped of their Romanian citizenship after Moldova was annexed by Russia after WWII and Romania gave them their citizenship back after the iron curtain fell. They can work and live legally anywhere in the EU, which many of them do. Almost every family has one or two members working abroad. Italy, Greece, Ireland, France and Germany are the most popular choices. Spain and Portugal used to be popular choices too but are much less so in the last couple of years. Our host worked as an audit manager at Deloitte in London for a couple of years.
Many Moldovan kids live with their parents abroad and go to school in Italy, England, France and come over to visit their grandparents during the summer holidays. They speak Romanian with their grandparents and their parents but Italian, French, English, etc between themselves. It is really funny to see a Moldovan barefoot kid looking after the sheep in a Moldovan village breaking out into a thick Scottish accent all of a sudden.
The majority of those who are not EU citizens are Russians and Ukrainians and they usually have Russian passports and a lot of them work in Moscow, St Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia, which is almost five times richer than Moldova. There are also quite a lot of Moldovan Jews in the capital who have Israeli passports but live and do business in Moldova.
