Abstract:
In the former European communist block, the rural area has a
significant demographical potential, capable of strongly influencing political
and administrative decisions. This is why regional development cannot be
achieved in normal conditions without taking into account the sustaining and
participating potential of the rural population. In addition, in some nations of
the former Eastern European communist block among which Romania we
witness an obvious ruralisation process as a result of the industrial collapse
in most urban centers. The world historical experience facilitates the choice
and the adoption of the adoption of the most suitable ways of development,
together with a considerable financial support from the European Union. The
European Union has founded ever since 1998 the common Nomenclature for
statistic territorial units (NUTS) in order to facilitate the collection, the
establishment, and the diffusion of regional statistics in an organised
manner. Fundamentally, the defining of territorial units is done per
administrative units already existing in member nations. The geographical,
economic, and social presentation of the economic development regions of
Romania (NUTS 2), regions delimited in accordance with Law 151/1998,
shows obvious disparities, the lack of functional economic and commercial
links within the regions, and total disregard for traditions and historical
backgrounds. In a word, delimiting development regions was only based on
secondary considerations of statistical and proximity nature. In this paper we
suggest a few variants of delimiting development regions that meet, as much
as possible, the NUTS criteria established by the European Union, i.e. NUTS
1 should cover development macro-regions with populations between 3 and 7
million inhabitants; NUTS 2 should cover development regions with
populations between 800,000 and 3 million inhabitants; and NUTS 3 should
cover regions with populations between 150,000 and 800,000 inhabitants
and corresponding to the present counties of Romania.
