Looking out on yet another miserable rainy day and realising that the cost of living had soared yet again, Alexandra Stamate knew that her family’s future did not lie in the UK.
With every month proving a struggle to make ends meet in Bristol, she and her Uber driver husband decided that they had to leave with their three children.
The couple, who emigrated to Britain in search of a better life, ended up joining a growing exodus of their fellow Romanians who have returned to their homeland in recent years.
Five years on, they are embracing life on their own smallholding in an idyllic part of Romania where they grow their own food and are largely self-sufficient.
It is a rural dream which would have been impossible in the UK where high land prices meant the idea of owning their own farm was far beyond them.
Around four million people emigrated from Romania in the decades after the overthrow of communism in their country – included many who headed to the UK to seek a better future.
But a booming economy in Romania with average wages increasing by more than 700% in the last ten years, low unemployment, cheap housing, and a perceived lower crime rate has tempted many to return home.
The trend is reflected in the UK with 37,000 Romanian residents leaving Britain in the year up to last June and only 14,000 arriving, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Alexandra Stamate and her Uber driver husband Florin moved to Britain in search of a better life – but after a period living in Bristol, they have joined the thousands of Romanians returning home
Five years on from their return from the UK, Alexandra and Florin (pictured) are embracing life on their own smallholding in an idyllic part of Romania
The family grow their own food and are largely self-sufficient. Pictured: Alexandra harvesting a crop of onions
There was a time when ease of movement meant Romanians arrived to the UK in their droves, but as the cost of living has eaten into residents’ quality of life, more and more people are returning to picturesque Bucharest (pictured)
Mrs Stamate told the Daily Mail how she and her husband Florin had high hopes of settling permanently when they left Romania and moved to Bristol in 2015.
They both initially worked in a butchery before he became an Uber driver and she stopped working to care for their three children who were born in the UK.
Mrs Stamate said: ‘The cost of living kept rising, and raising children felt more and more demanding financially and emotionally. Like many families, we also became more aware of issues such as safety and the overall of pressure of urban life.’
She and her husband realised their future could lie in farming after they gained experience growing vegetables on an allotment in Bristol.
They ended up buying land in a rural idyll around Apold in Romania’s remote Mureș County because they would never have been able to afford a smallholding in the UK.
Mrs Stamate added: ‘Property prices and everyday costs in rural areas [in the UK] were far beyond what we felt was sustainable long term. And I didn’t want to borrow money from banks. The weather also played a role.
‘Romania offered us affordable land, a better climate for outdoor living and a chance to build a countryside life that wouldn’t have been realistic for us in the UK.’
The couple, both now 35, paid just £6,500 for two acres of land which included a run-down farmhouse in need of extensive renovation, just before Covid in 2020. They now keep goats, pigs, chickens and bees, and grow vegetables and fruit.
They eat their own produce and also sell honey, milk and cheese while Mrs Stamate runs a popular Facebook page called Ferma Emigranți În Grădină [Emigrant Farm in the Garden] where she posts advice about countryside living to her 355,000 followers.
Her posts sometimes reflected on the differences between her old life in England and her happiness with her family’s return to Romania.
Romanian entrepreneurs Bogdan Termure used the 37,000 euro grant he was awarded for returning home to start up his own successful food takeaway courier delivery business.
She said: ‘In the countryside, we may not have display cases full of expensive goodies, but we have cellars with jars, pantries with jam and pickles, and barns with wheat and corn.
‘We may not always dress according to the latest fashion, but we have hardworking hands and abundant tables. And, above all, we have that peace that only a person who knows that he will never go hungry can have. Because the land, animals and nature will not let you down if you take care of them.
‘In the city, you depend on the shelves of a supermarket. In the village, you depend on your work and your loved one. And that gives you freedom. It’s not luxury that brings security. But simplicity and the land. And here, in the countryside, we know that we have everything we need. And that, for me, is the greatest wealth.’
She added: ‘I make a fire in the stove in the morning. In the UK I would turn on the central heating. Here I feel the warmth of the wood and the smell of smoke that enters your soul.
‘I get my milk directly from the source. Not from the supermarket, not pasteurised, but hand-milked, warm, full of life. I make my own bread. With sourdough, patiently, with my own hands. In the UK I bought everything packaged.
‘I live in the rhythm of nature. In the city you run according to the clock and schedule. In the country, life flows according to the seasons, according to the crowing of the rooster and the sunset.’
The numbers of Romanians leaving the UK are higher than for any other EU nationality, dwarfing the 25,000 Polish people who left Britain to return to their low-tax homeland in the year up to last June.
The Daily Mail this week found no shortage of comments on social media from Romanians wanting to escape the UK’s high crime levels, drugs, rising cost of living, and what many perceive as growing discrimination against their nationality following Brexit
They are set to join a flood of their countrymen who have already left the UK with the attraction of improving economic conditions in Romania tipping the balance in favour of returning.
Now, with wages increasing by 700 per cent in the last ten years, cheaper housing, low unemployment and a perceived lower crime rate, Romania is seen as a better place to settle. Pictured: Revellers dancing in traditional bear costumes in Bucharest
Falls in the value of sterling have also contributed to their dissatisfaction, meaning many have less money to send back to Romania to purchase property of their own or care for elderly relatives.
The Government in Bucharest has been calling for years for its citizens to return, having lost around a quarter of its population to emigration since Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was overthrown and executed with his wife on Christmas Day in 1989.
An advertising campaign to entice workers back, with grants and loans available for returning entrepreneurs, was launched in 2019 to increase Romania’s stagnating population of around 19 million people which has also been hit by a declining birth rate.
The 1,600 returning Romanian entrepreneurs qualifying for Start Up Nation grants include Bogdan Termure, who used his award of 37,000 euros under the scheme in 2019 to start up his own food takeaway courier delivery business.
Mr Termure, 37, told the Daily Mail that he emigrated to the UK in 2011 with his wife Maura, 36, after Romania joined the EU on January 1, 2007, allowing freedom of movement to other member states.
He initially washed dishes in restaurants in Coventry before working for courier firms including Hermes, and later buying a franchise business – delivering takeaways for the likes of McDonalds and KFC.
But his happiness in the UK was shattered by the Brexit vote in 2016 which he claimed led to an upsurge in resentment against Romanians.
Mr Termure said: ‘It was very hard for us. It became the case that Romanians were only associated with bad things in the UK. I would tell new people when I met them for the first time that I was Russian because that would create a better impression. I would only admit to them later that I was Romanian.
‘My two children were born in the UK, and I felt it would be bad for them to grow up with this discrimination, even though they spoke English better than many British people.’
Mr Termure and his family returned to the Romanian city of Iasi and he qualified for his grant to set up his delivery business called HIO which now indirectly employs 2,000 couriers across the country, delivering food by bike, car or scooter.
His successful business with an annual turnover of around 3million lei or 600,000 euros has been granted additional EU funding of 1.6million euros to develop an international platform for couriers of food, groceries and parcels to share deliveries with each other.
More Romanians are leaving the UK than any other EU nationality, dwarfing the 25,000 Polish people who left Britain to return to their low-tax homeland in the year up to last June
Another Romanian hospitality worker in Bucharest who asked not to be named said he had returned from the UK two years ago after getting fed up with ‘disrespect from British people’.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘I always worked hard and paid my taxes, but people would be thinking I was a criminal or on benefits. I also got fed up with all the crime and the drugs, which are everywhere in England.
‘I decided it was not a good place to stay when I could easily work back in Romania, and still have a nice life.’
Other Romanians have expressed a variety of reasons for returning home including simply feeling homesick or simply wanting to escape the British weather for their sunnier homeland.
Self-employed beautician Cristina Costache who is aged in her 20s, told in a YouTube video in February this year how she and her husband had moved back to the city of Sibiu, saying she felt safer and happier there after five years living in Sussex.
Filming herself outside her new apartment beside the snow-capped Carpathian mountains, she talked of her life in England, saying: ‘I didn’t like the weather at all. It was always gloomy with rainy days. I like the sunny days.’
She also told of her belief that people in the UK spent too much time working and had little time to ‘enjoy life’, with places like restaurants always being full and requiring booking in advance.
Looking out on her beautiful new surroundings, she added: ‘Every time I went to London, I was so stressed. There was a lot of people and it was so crowded… It was a little bit scary. London is not so safe… I don’t think the UK is as safe as Romania. Here I feel safe and happy… In the UK everything is expensive.’
The Romanian government has been offering its citizens financial incentives to return to the country to bolster the country’s stagnating population of 19 million people – and it appears to be working
A worker called Stefania at an Irish pub in Bucharest called The Ace said she left the UK three-years-ago after 12 years working in restaurants which included managing the Marco Pierre White steakhouse in Birmingham and another restaurant in Bolton, Lancashire.
But unlike some others, she insisted she did not return because of feeling any discrimination and stated that her decision was mainly down to the NHS failing to properly diagnose a serious medical condition she had and instead treating her with anxiety tablets.
She said: ‘I love England. I have lots of friends there and I miss almost everything about it – even the rain. But I nearly died because of the NHS, and I decided I would get better medical care in Romania. The wages are less, but I have a very good life here. Money is not everything.’
Other have left the UK simply because they have had job offers back in Romania or felt it was time to return home after years of working away from family and friends.
Horatiu Ioani, a neurosurgeon, worked at teaching hospitals in Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield after arriving with his dentist partner in the UK in 2009, but returned to Bucharest when he was offered a job there just before the Brexit vote in 2016.
Neurosurgeon Horatiu Ioani worked in UK hospitals before returning to Romania
Describing his time in the UK, he said: ‘I never felt like an outsider because I worked with people from all backgrounds and in hospitals which were culturally aware. I left simply because I had the challenge of a new project.
‘Salaries are lower in Romania, but money goes further. Here, I can make my own operating and clinic schedule. It is a big luxury for me. I am more in control of my life.’
Other Romanians believe that women are safer walking the traffic-choked streets of Bucharest and heading out to bars and restaurants in pairs or groups, than they are in British cities.
Data collated by the global platform Numbeo which rates the perceptions of citizens in different countries, lists Romania as having lower perceived crime and being safer than countries such as the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Norway and Hungary, although there are concerns about bribery and corruption.
Restaurant worker Sinziama Balo, 27, said she had not gone to live abroad because she did not want to leave her grandmother in Romania who raised her, but she had an unpleasant experience when she visited London with a friend three years ago.
She said: ‘This guy came up to us. He was wasted on drugs or drink, and started to speak to us, but he didn’t make any sense. We tried to ignore him, but he hit a car. We ran away and when we looked back, he was trying to have a fight with some random guys. They beat him up really badly, and people on the street were behaving like it was normal.
‘It made me suffer anxiety for the rest of my holiday. There were also men flirting with us the whole time, and trying to get us to give them our phone numbers.’
Unlike the generation before her, restaurant worker Sinziama Balo has no intention of leaving Romania and moving to the UK. She had an unpleasant holiday in London three years ago
Romanians were banned from being employed in the UK without a visa before the country joined the EU.
Membership of the EU in 2007 allowed them to get quota-based jobs in sectors like agriculture or food processing or certain skilled jobs under transitional rules until the end of 2013.
Others were allowed to be self-employed leading to many taking on roles such as dealing in scrap metal.
The transitional controls were axed on January 1, 2014, giving Romanians full freedom of employment, leading to thousands more arriving.
The census in 2011 reported that the number of Romanian-born people in the UK had risen to 83,168, up from just 7,631 ten-years earlier, while the 2021 census recorded 557,554 of them, making Romanians the fourth largest group of immigrants behind those from Pakistan, Poland and India.
Following Brexit, 435,720 Romanians were given indefinite leave to remain under the UK’s EU Settlement Scheme if they had five years of continuous UK residence, while another 670,560 were given pre-settled status for having less than five years residence, allowing them to apply for settled status in the future.
The exact number of Romanians in the UK now is not revealed in official statistics, although the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence stated in a report in 2023 that it was anything between 342,000 to more than one million, according to different sources.
Romanians wanting to work in the UK now must generally apply for a UK Skilled Worker Visa, meaning they have been offered a job in advance with a salary of at least £41,700, although workers aged under 26 or those with academic qualifications can earn less.
The rules have slashed the number of Romanians trying to move to the UK, although they can still apply for student or family visas if they have a partner/spouse, parent or child living in the UK with permanent residence or British citizenship.
But the improved standard of living in Romania, also appears to have persuaded many to stay at home in the country.
Romania’s National Institute of Statistics (INS) revealed that the average monthly net wage after tax in January this year was 5,328 lei (£917), an increase of more than seven times the figure of just 723 lei (£124) in 2005.
The increase has led to a rise in living standards, even taking into account that inflation was 5.6% in 2024, and prices are currently 2.85 times higher than they were in 2005.
While rents for homes across the UK have soared in recent years, the average cost of a two bedroom apartment in Bucharest is between 300 euros and 500 euros a month.
Romanians who have talked about their plans on social media to return home include those with British spouses.
Coach tour driver Jonathan Hall, 61, and his Romanian wife Oana, 51, who runs a successful dog grooming and training business near Cardiff in south Wales plan to live in Romania once they retire.
Mr Hall said: ‘Things were better before Brexit. There is too much crime in the UK now. It’s ridiculous. There is also a lot of racism. I have experienced it because I am English and live in Wales.
Improvements in living standards is one reason why people are coming back – or not leaving at all. Romania’s National Institute of Statistics revealed that the average salary this year was 5,328 lei (£917), an increase of more than seven times the figure of just 723 lei (£124) in 2005
‘My wife feels the same way. She has had more racism than me. Even though she speaks fluent English, people still tell her to speak properly, and some customers have turned round when they walk in and realise she is not Welsh.
‘There is a massive British community in Romania and everybody is lovely over there.’
Comments on social media include one from a Bucharest resident, praising life in the city compared to her previous experience of living in the UK.
She posted: ‘First, the culture, the vibe and the people are so cool, young, energetic, trendy, beautiful girls taking care of themselves, handsome guys, amazing nature, good food, lots of business opportunities, rent in central Bucharest is £300 a month and cost of living is very low, great public transport, no benefit culture, no binge drinking culture, great weather, sunny climate, snow in the winter, great as a base or trips around Europe.’
Another planning to return to Romania after 14 years in the UK, posted that she was doing so because of the UK’s ‘cost of living, high crime, drugs everywhere, poor weather, bad education’ and ‘poor medical system’.
