Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper aims to discuss the responses to global trends which affect East‐European regions, offering a case study in Romania, namely that of the Bucharest–Ilfov region. This region is considered a relevant example of relative winner in the regional competition at global scale, as one of the most attractive cities for foreign investors in Central and Eastern Europe. With this aim in view the paper focuses on the economy of the region, the global trends which affect it, the specific responses to global trends, including policy aspects and emphasizes the factors supporting the benefits of globalization as well as those impeding these benefits. The analysis is based on both statistical data and qualitative issues brought into discussion by international and Romanian inquiries.Resumen. El objetivo de este artículo es discutir las respuestas a las tendencias globales que afectan a las regiones de Europa del Este, a través de un estudio de caso en Rumanía, en particular el de la región de Bucarest‐Ilfov. Esta región está considerada como un ejemplo de un triunfo relativo en la competencia regional a escala global, siendo una de las ciudades más atractivas para la inversión extranjera en Europa Central y del Este. Con este propósito, el artículo se centra en la economía de la región, las tendencias globales que la afectan, las respuestas específicas a dichas tendencia globales que incluyen aspectos de políticas y en poner énfasis tanto en los factores que apoyan las ventajas de la globalización como en aquellos que las dificultan. El análisis está basado tanto en datos estadísticos como en temas cualitativos suscitados por la investigación internacional y nacional de Rumanía.

After less than two years from its accession to the EU, Romania was seriously hit by the global financial and economic crisis. Compared to other former transition countries, the turmoil was deeper and lasted longer and a modest recovery was recorded only in the second half of 2011, given deep internal vulnerabilities that amplified the impact of international shocks. Consequently, the Romanian regions have been also hit by the crisis, which induced an uneven distribution of its effects at regional scale, depending on the specific economic and social structures, regional specialisation degree, export orientation of economic activities, etc. The crisis has generated difficulties for the beneficiaries of the EU-funded projects – both local public administration and private firms - to provide the co-financing contribution, so that the Romanian Government has had to adopt a series of measures meant to support the implementation of the on-going Operational Programmes and the EU funds absorption process as well. This paper discusses the main developments of Romania's regional policy particularly in the 2009-2011 period, considered crucial years for the successful implementation of this policy. The economic, institutional, political factors that have influenced the regional policy during these years are analysed at the same time with the solutions proposed at the middle of the 2007-2013 programming period for the problems which the regional policy implementation is confronted with.

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.

Environmental sustainability has a complex significance. It is both a theoretical concept and a practical challenge which implies a specific approach, allowing for concrete time and space circumstances. Romania, that experiences a stressful and often painful process of transition to the market economy, has to face important environmental challenges at the same time with great political, economic, social, organisational, cultural, behavioural ones. Therefore environmental preservation strategy is closely related to other components of the national strategy and reform - the sectoral strategies, the strategy of socio-economic regional development, the national physical plan and so on - that take into consideration environmental constraints too. Even though the integration of all these components was a major concern, it cannot be said that this has been really achieved. However, the development of the environmental preservation strategy is only a means to an end, implementation, monitoring and evaluation being also required. In this respect it is apparent that, whatever the importance of financing this strategy, the whole society's participation, as well as communication/information and adequate education are a corner stone for carrying out the proposed objectives. It is absolutely acknowledged that successful strategies are participatory; participation must be concieved in terms of both government ( national and local) and non-governmental actors (corporate sector, non-governmental organisations as well as direct involvement with communities and individuals). In order to carry out their specific functions these actors have to rely on an appropriate legal framework, economic instruments and mechanisms for mediation and conflict resolution. The committment of the participants involved as well as a conducive political and social climate are critical in a 'people-centred' approach to environmentally suatainable development strategy. Starting from these overall conditions this paper aims at highlighting the institutional and behavioural challenges to Romania's environmental preservation strategy, so as to answer questions as: to what extent is the Romanian society able to adapt to environmental change ? which are the mechanisms, the instruments that can be employed to face this change and to attain the objectives proposed? Without denying the role of technical change in such processes, this paper focuses on the need of real, radical changes not only in terms of institutional, legislative framework but also in terms of behaviour, mentalities, attitudes. In this context the environmental management decentralization and the role of local public administration and local communities are particularly addressed.

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.