The Birth of the RACC

February 2010 marks the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce™ (the “RACC”) – an early milestone in the course of Romania’s emergence from beneath the cloud of Nicolae Ceausescu’s brutal brand of communism. A journey through the RACC’s twenty year history is a march through a past dotted with the formative personalities and events that shaped Romania. It is a story of support, dedication, hard work and affection for a people and a nation by Americans, many of whom had no prior ties to Romania, and others who were persecuted by Romania’s communists, had their properties stolen and were hounded out of the country.

It all began one month after the Romanian revolution in January 1990, when a group of American business leaders and professionals led by Mark A. Meyer, Esq., an international lawyer based in New York, met to form the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce™. The founding of an independent, apolitical and bilateral organization devoted to developing and improving Romanian-U.S. relations and commerce was important to the newly formed National Salvation Front government, which encouraged the RACC’s founders from the outset. Although there had been an organization of American business interests whose members traded with the Ceausescu regime, it had virtually dissolved sometime prior to the December 1989 Romanian revolution. Consequently, representatives of major US firms, such as IBM, Coca-Cola, Deloitte & Touche, Chemical Bank, Colgate-Palmolive, Caterpillar, ConAgra, RKO, and GE, as well as smaller import export companies, were delighted to participate in the formation of a new entity devoted to expanding relations with a newly-free Romania. With only a few exceptions, none of the firms participating in the formation of the RACC had much prior experience in Romania. They banded to