Has the Romanian state officially entered bankruptcy and should people withdraw all their money from banks? No, that's not true: a TikTok video is misstating financial data to make it sound as though Romania is borrowing billions of Euros and cannot pay them back.
The claim originated from a video published on TikTok on July 31, 2023 (archived here) with following description:
Alert!!! Romania is in bankruptcy. Withdraw all your money from the banks, otherwise the state will take them.
This is what the post, translated from Romanian to English by Lead Stories staff, looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Aug 10 13:34:26 2023 UTC)
The TikTok user alleges that Romania is borrowing a billion Euros on a monthly basis. Romania just received the second loan in the past 12 months from the World Bank, of around 600 million Euros. While still borrowing money, Romania's GDP and economy are also growing: to 300 billion EUR, and 3%, respectively. It is true that public debt doubled in the past few years and is around 50% of the GDP, but other European countries are in worse situations including Italy, France and Greece.
Antena 3/CNN, the news station quoted by the TikTok user, is the only source that reported having "information" that Romania will borrow another billion Euros in August 2023. There is no official confirmation for this.
According to Eurostat quoted by Digi24, the EU's economy is slowly recovering, but is still stalled by a difficult situation in Germany.
