The free trade with the EU countries represents the critical factor which conditions Romania's rapid modernization. Romania has lacked a serious political debate focused on a modernization project for 11 years. Such a project should be centered mainly on the economic and institutional modernization, both being consolidated by a modernizing political project. At present, we can imagine two modernization scenarios. The first one is based on free trade and foreign investments - it is an open perspective. The second focuses on protectionism and the orientation of the resources towards the autochthonous investors - this is a scenario based on a closed perspective. The main economic springs of the first scenario are related to the following concepts: productivity space, productivity implant, salaried bourgeoisie. The productivity space represents a characteristic of a cultural space which measures the efficiency with which the primary resources of a country are used. For instance, Romania needs 7 employees in order to perform the work of a unique French employee. The productivity implant represents a transfer of knowledge and mechanisms menat to apply this knowledge from a superior technological space to an inferior one. This implant increases the average productivity of a space and might reduce the gap of 7/1 existing between Romania and France to just 2/1. The salaried bourgeoisie is the class of employees of the foreign companies who will have higher salaries than those specific to the Romanian productivity space; such salaries are possible due to the productivity implant represented by direct foreign investments. The free trade with the EU countries represents the critical factor which conditions this scenario. The possibillty of selling products on a market of 370 (and maybe more than 500 in the future) million people represents the only advantage Romania has in order