Suchergebnisse

Starting with 1998, when the process of Romania's accession to the EU was officially launched, the legal and institutional framework for regional development policy has been created, followed by the elaboration of the National Development Plan. As the programming document that builds up Romania's access to the structural-type funds in the pre-accession period and to the structural and cohesion ones after accession to the EU, the NDP responds to both 'internal necessities' and 'external requirements', revealing the philosophy of the EU support via pre-accession instruments, which has a twofold significance: on the one hand the financial aid is viewed as a way of reducing economic and social disparities between the candidate and the EU member countries; on the other hand, working with pre-accession instruments, creating the institutional framework for measures implementation, action monitoring and impact evaluation allow the candidate countries' authorities to get used to European Commission's procedures and, thus, to be prepared for the administration of the much higher amounted financial funds after accession to the EU. Though, in the case of Romania the institutional framework for regional development policy has suffered a lot of changes since 1998, with negative consequences on the absorption capacity of EU funds, serving as a good example for explaining why so many times Romania has been severely criticised by EU for institutional instability and delays in institutional reform. This paper proposes an analysis of Romania's regional development policy in the perspective of accession to the European Union, with a particular emphasis on the institutional transformations and future challenges, especially those referring to the post-accession period. The author's contribution to a recent study on Romania's capacity to absorb the EU funds (developed under the auspices of the European Institute of Romania) will be presented, offering an evaluation of the components that characterise the administrative capacity of absorption in programming field.

This paper represents a part of the author's contribution to the project "Housing rehabilitation in apartment block areas in Romania" developed under the auspices of the National Council for Higher Education Scientific Research. It addresses the relationship between housing policy and local development policy mainly from an institutional and legislative perspective, focusing on the actors involved in supporting housing and urban renewal actions in Romania. The role of local public administration is particularly envisaged, considering the authority of city councils with regard to rehabilitation of apartment block areas and, in a wider context, to urban regeneration. Several case studies on various Romanian cities will be presented in order to reveal not only current opportunities but also a series of drawbacks in this process.

When the environmental issues are addressed in sustainability, human security terms the information demand is getting more complex, emphasising the need to integrate environmental, economic and socio-cultural information. This paper proposes an insight into the data and indicator issues on environment and human security in Romania from an institutional perspective. To a country in transition like Romania creating appropriate organisational structures and legislation has beed a prerequisite to building a realistic and effective environmental protection strategy. Therefore a presentation of the institutional and legislative framework of environmental protection created after 1989, in comparison with the situation in the communist period, has been considered necessary for understanding the institutional context of environmental data collecting, transmitting, processing and employing. On this basis the environmental information system has been critically assessed in terms of content, information flows and further developments related to human security issues. The data reliability at various territorial levels of data collecting, processing and transmitting has been also analysed in this context. A special emphasis has been put on the actors involved in employing the environmental information for strategy and policy elaboration and implementation, management and administration as well as for scientific research, environmental education and public participation purposes. A typology of these actors from organisational viewpoint has been proposed and analysed, pointing out the need of enhancing the netwotking effects at both national and international level.

AbstractFor a long time, inequalities have existed across the population and between different communities and groups. Although regional inequality is a topic of interest among scholars and policy makers, only recently have they been increasingly investigated at local territorial units. The economic shock related to the COVID‐19 crisis, which resulted from the lockdown and significant decline in economic activity in many sectors, has affected all regions, but not in the same way or with a similar intensity. Assessing some regional indicators available in the first period of the ongoing COVID‐19 crisis depicting the quality of life, it is becoming evident that new regional disparities emerge and interact with many of the pre‐existing inequalities. This paper aims to provide new insights on the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on inequalities across two dimensions, namely employment and health conditions, with relevance for the standard of living. By investigating past and current evolutions of some indicators, as reflected at the NUTS3 territorial level in Romania and the use of spatial analysis, our study shows that new fissures generated by the health crisis have deepened the existing inequalities at the regional level along various key dimensions such as gender, age, education, and rural–urban and local geography. This empirical study, considering traditional measurements of inequality and relevant spatial investigation, evaluates the intensity of inequalities across all Romanian counties.

Location is a key concept in tourism sector analysis, given the dependence of this activity on the natural, built, cultural and social characteristics of a certain territory. As a result, the tourist zoning is an important instrument for delimiting tourist areas in accordance with multiple criteria, so as to lay the foundations for finding the most suitable solutions of turning to good account the resources in this field. The modern approaches proposed in this paper use a series of analytical tools that combine GIS and spatial agglomeration analysis based techniques. They can be also employed in order to examine and explain the differences between tourist zones (and sub-zones) in terms of economic and social results and thus to suggest realistic ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of tourist activities in various geographical areas. In the described context this paper proposes an interdisciplinary perspective (spatial statistics and Geographical Information Systems) for analysing the tourism activity in Romania, mainly aiming to identify the agglomerations of companies acting in this industry and assess their performance and contribution to the economic development of the corresponding regions. It also intends to contribute to a better understanding of the way in which tourism related business activities develop, in order to enhance appropriate support networks. Territorial and spatial statistics, as well as GIS based analyses are applied, using data about all companies acting in tourism industry in Romania provided by the National Authority for Tourism as well as data from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI).

This paper represents a part of the authors' contribution to a study developed under the auspices of the European Institute in Romania included in the "Pre-Accession Impact Studies - PAIS II" series, funded by a Phare project. The study combines the aspects related to mechanisms, legislation, institutional and behavioural challenges with the quantitative and qualitative estimations of the external migration effects, in accordance with Romania's preparations for accession to the EU. The main conclusion pointed out by the analysis of the institutional issues is that so far the measures which are adopted in Romania with regard to both legislation and institutional framework are rather reactive, aiming to ensure the adjustment to the EU requirements, than to design and follow a national migration policy with clear objectives. As it completes the creation of the legal-institutional framework according to the EU standards, Romania will concentrate on designing its own migration policy, convergent with those existing at European level. Moreover, the elaboration and adoption of laws, the creation of institutions, the development of corresponding strategies and policies represent major components of this process, but their success cannot be separated from the manner in which the involved actors –governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations, mass-media, communities, individuals – respond to the so-called "behavioural challenges", related to participation, communication, mentalities and attitudes. The paper is organized as follows: first, an analysis of the integration mechanisms is provided, focusing on migration flows, specific mechanisms and institutional-legislative framework created in Romania for external migration administration. Second, the inquiry into the social-cultural dimension highlights the migrant's profile (emigrant, immigrant), the issues related to the integration within the host country and the phenomenon perception by public opinion and mass-media. The entire paper supports the idea that with a careful, objective vision and proper management the future national migration policy may become a major catalyst, able to enhance a new economic prosperity in Romania.

Since 1990 the territorial mobility in Romania has recorded a series of particularities determined by major transformations in the political, economic and social life. The economic disparities already existing between the prosperous and the lagging regions have increased during the transition years, influenced by institutional renewal, restructuring, privatization, etc. Several regions display higher unemployment rates, lower activity rates, lower incomes per capita and higher out-migration rates compared with the average. These regions have adapted inadequately to the changing economic conditions, such as the decline of various industries (e.g. coal mining in the south part of Romania) and, as a result of this fact, their out-migration has been intensified. In the early 1990s were already noticed widespread regional disparities in terms of labour supply as well as the main demographic indicators. Starting from this overall image the present paper examines the main changes in the intensity, orientation and territorial distance of migration flows as well as their structure and the variable influence of the ?push / pull? factors involved in this process. As a preliminary step in the analysis of the main characteristics of interregional mobility in Romania, the most significant zones in terms of their contribution to total national migration have been selected. Population and labour mobility between regions has been studied using a set of indicators calculated for the 1990 - 2000 period: gross and net migration, in- and out-migration rates, in- and out-migration flows for the selected zones, their structure and dynamics and so on. Regression functions, input-output tables and gravitational models have been mainly employed. Analysing the results, the economic disparities seem to be the key issue in the question of population and labour mobility, as asserted by the neoclassical theory. Though, its mechanism is not confirmed by a series of concrete situations, such as the intense urban-rural flows, showing that, besides the economic factors, the institutional ones as well as the individual and family motivations are also very important for the persons that decide to migrate. In the next years is expected a decrease in the interregional migration in favour of the intra-regional one. The migration flows from urban to rural areas at the same time with those from rural to rural areas will continue to play a significant role. Finally, the paper discusses the economic policy measures able to reduce the long-distance migration and the intensity of the ?push? factors.

Nos últimos 20-25 anos as economias regionais dos novos estados-membros da UE foram confrontadas com múltiplos desafios, desde a transição à crise e integração na UE. Estes refletiram-se no conteúdo de transformações estruturais e políticas regionais, estreitamente relacionadas com os objetivos de coesão económica, social e territorial. Este artigo propõe um estudo de caso no município de Alba, na Roménia, como um exemplo relevante de reestruturação bem-sucedida num ambiente económico turbulento. A metodologia da pesquisa foi baseada em profundas entrevistas realizadas com representantes dos intervenientes nacionais e locais, bem como no tratamento e na interpretação dos dados estatísticos socioeconómicos, documentos estratégicos versando sobre a estratégia de desenvolvimento, vários relatórios de avaliações das políticas públicas, etc.

The current research has concentrated on the following questions: What are the trends in restructuring Suceava's economy and which regional development factors were the most important (exogenous, endogenous, structural, socio-political ones, etc.)? Which is the relationship between social disparities and economic growth? Which regional/local policies proved to be the most successful for economic regeneration? How important was the external intervention for county's development? In order to respond these questions in-depth interviews were carried out with representatives of county and city office, national and regional authorities, Regional Development Agency, chambers of commerce, business associations, higher education institutions, and implementing authorities. Also, statistical socio-economic data were gathered and processed and strategic documents on development strategy, as well as various reports on evaluations of public policies have been studied. The study has been conducted within the GRINCOH FP7 project.

Romania's communist regime used forced industrialization and urbanization policies as a solution for speeding-up the pace of development in the lagging areas, which resulted in reducing regional disparities. However, after 1989 there areas were the first that suffered the hardships of economic restructuring, the economic and social discrepancies at territorial level recording an important increase. The accession to the EU has created good opportunities for the economic regeneration of the lagging regions provided the European funds allocated to them be absorbed and employed in an effective and efficient manner. Based on these overall considerations this paper proposes a case study in the North-East region of Romania. This region, with the lowest GDP/capita in the country has an absorption rate higher than the Regional Operational Programme's national average and a commendable expertise in the implementation of the regional development projects. The research has investigated to what extent these promising results reflect the objectives of the strategy outlined in the programme documents of the 2007-2013 financial exercise, aiming at a balanced territorial development. The significance of the case study is twofold: on the one hand it offers a spotlight on a very sensitive area of Romania in terms of regional development level; on the other hand it discusses the added value, strategic quality and administrative capacity which have made it possible to record results above the average in the implementation process. In line with the regional problem and the identified needs and strengths, the enterprise support has been chosen as the policy heading for this study. There is a clear continuity between the priority axes and key areas of intervention focusing on enterprise support in the ROP 2007-2013 and the enhancement of the SME competitiveness in the Cohesion Policy for 2014-2020, as one of the key areas for economic growth and job creation. The desk research ? with inquiries into the most important programming documents and result reports relating to the ROP in Romania and, in particular in the North-East region, plus the large volume of data analysis ? have been accompanied by interviews with the persons involved in the implementation process ? from local authorities to experts and beneficiaries at national, regional and county level. The research has been undertaken under the auspices of the EU ? FP7 GRINCOH project.