TABLE OF CONTENTS

How many Romanias, how many regions and for what Romanians?

The detachment from the autarchic spell

The need of a model – A "Romanian whim" or a categorical imperative

How many Romanias and for what Romanians

A precipice that gets harder to fill

The concept of regional development

The situation until 1945

The situation during the Communist government

The regional development during the years of transition

The regional development and the socio-economic diversity in Romania

Characteristics and particularities of the process

The situation of the disadvantaged zones

The institutional construction of the regional development

The Romanian politics of regional development within European context

Strategy principles and aims of the regional development

Premises and perspectives of the economic evolution at the level of the development regions

Recommendations for Romanian development model at the regional level

The improvement of the SME management and of its organization system

Suggestions for a Romanian development model at the regional level

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The Interdisciplinary Reflection Group (IRG) of the House of Europe conducted the research. The main objective was to elaborate a study aimed to emphasize:

• the present regional specificity/diversity of the country’s regions;
• the possibilities of a functional reconversion of the traditional social-economic development models of each Romanian historic region;
• a package of recommendations, able to relaunch a coherent process of modernisation, in the context of administrative descentralisation and of the cohesive/solidarity policies promoted by the EU.

As Romania started the negociations for the accesssion to the European Union, the urgency to implement and improve the regional strategies and a harmonization policy at national level, concordant with the EU evolution and trends, has become extremely important. This theoretical attempt should be preceded by a mature understanding/ absorption of the main regional differences, to be determined on the basis of the analysis and re-valuation of the social and economic traditions, public administration organization during centuries, regional identities and work ethics and social-economic prevalent models etc.

In our view, the modernisation process of Romania should start by recognising the symbolical and practical importance of the previous traditional, social, cultural and mental models which could influence the systemic transformation of mentalities, as well as the present implementing regional development strategies. The realisation of an effective local autonomy and the subsidiarity principle is also becoming a major pressure on the Romanian society.

One of the major priorities of the moment consists in designing newly adapted alternatives facing the profound modification of the new representation of the country’s political and administrative coherence. It refers to a gradual revision process of the relations between the "center" and the regions, between the better developed areas and the defavorised ones.