The mayor of Timisoara has a favorite pastime when receiving visitors from Western Europe in his city in western Romania. He likes to watch the "shock on their faces when they realize how much their preconceptions about Romania differ from the reality," said Dominic Fritz, with an amused look on his face, referring to his remarkable city of around 250,000 inhabitants. Since joining the European Union in 2007, it has become the best showcase for the development this Eastern European country has experienced.

Here, there are no potholes, no cars parked haphazardly on the sidewalks and few neglected houses. On the contrary, there are wide and clean streets, new buildings with modern architecture, busy factories and even a pretty downtown area filled with cafés since it became pedestrianized with the help of European funding. Although there's still work to be done to renovate all the facades inherited from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, you might almost be in a medium-sized German town.

However, it's primarily in the enormous Iulius Town shopping mall that the "Timisoara effect" comes into its own. In this ultramodern complex, surrounded by offices and restaurants built around a suspended garden, you might feel even further west than Western Europe. "I was surprised when I went to Germany: They don't use their shopping malls as meeting places, whereas for us it's become really important," said Laura, a 36-year-old pharmacist who came to have lunch with her mother in this symbol of the American-style lifestyle adopted by Romania's growing middle class.

Timisoara has always set itself apart in this country of 19 million, one of the poorest in the EU, but its inhabitants agree that the 2007 enlargement has profoundly transformed their city. Close to the Serbian and Hungarian borders, it has benefited from its unique geographical location. Timisoara is completely off the beaten track from the rest of Romania, a seven-hour drive from the capital, Bucharest, but very close to Central Europe's Danube region, which has become the new beating heart of European industry.

Favorable historical foundation

"Timisoara is only an hour from Hungary, which is very well connected to Western European markets," said Alexander Klein, the Austrian head of an electronic subcontracting factory owned by the American company Flex since 2007. Like Continental, Nokia, Atos and Bosch, Flex set up in Timisoara at the turn of the 2000s to take advantage of Romania's entry into the single market. Originally there to produce low-end parts, notably for the automotive industry, many of these Western companies have since had to move upmarket.

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