Regional Development in Romania – From Regulations to Practice

Regional development is a concept focused on stimulating and diversifying the economic activities, stimulating investments in the private and public sector, meant to reduce the socio-economic differences between various areas, in order to improve the standard of living and offer high quality services to citizens. Regional development represents one of the main objectives of the European Union. The idea of region is nowadays a European one, a major functional principle of the Union, and also a condition of the administrative reform within the member or candidate states. Within the European Union the region is considered “the next level after the state” or “a territory that forms a net unit from geographical point of view, or a similar assembly of territories having continuity, population sharing certain common elements and willing to keep and develop their specificity in order to stimulate the cultural, social and economic progress”, rather administrative definition. At present, we cannot speak of administrative regions in Romania, but just economic, because the region is not yet included among the territorial-administrative units in the Constitution. The first post-revolutionary law regarding the regional development was the Law no. 151/1998, repealed in 2004 by the Law no. 315/2004 regarding the regional development of Romania, regulation that established the objectives of the policy in the field of regional development, the responsible institutions, competences and specific instruments meant to promote the actions of regional development.