10:56, 10 Feb. 2025
Bucharest ranked 28 of 33 European cities last year.
Real estate consultancy company Cushman&Wakefield placed Bucharest before Moscow (32), Oslo (33) and Athens (34) in its study European Cities Monitor.
The top three European business destinations remain the same as last year: London, Paris and Frankfurt.
The study European Cities Monitor entailed interviewing managers in charge of locating new business destinations for 500 top European companies.
They referred to criteria such as workforce availability and costs (60% of the respondents), access to other markets (59% of the respondents), transportation quality, IT and communication, office location costs and quality of life.
Bucharest lost one position, and ranked second after Warsaw by labor costs.
However, the capital ranks 32 in point of employee qualifications, while Budapest, Prague and Warsaw rank 21, 24 and 25 respectively.
Foreign investors are not pleased with knowledge of foreign languages, placing Bucharest 28, after Budapest (21), Warsaw (20) and Prague (21).
The quality of employees’ life placed Bucharest on position 31, before Warsaw, and after Budapest (30) and Prague (29).
Bucharest transformed the internal transportation into an advantage since last year, climbing from 30 to 26 in this year’s ranking.
Another positive aspect for Bucharest was the access to other markets, which placed Romania’s capital eight positions higher to 24, same as Stockholm and Istanbul, and ahead of Rome, Vienna and Athens.
Bucharest ranked 13 by of office space rents an 28 by quality of office locations. Both criteria worked to a visible detriment of Bucharest’s hierarchy in this year’s ranking.
Telecommunications brought Bucharest from the 32nd to the 29th position in this year’s ranking.
Bucharest kept its 11th place by efforts made by local authorities to encourage business.
Bucharest is the third location which would benefit from investments from the 500 European multinational companies included in the study, after Moscow and Prague, on the same position as Warsaw and ahead of Budapest.