Simultaneous globalization tendencies have created policy challenges for national and local governments. One response to these challenges has been a dramatic proliferation of development policies based on clusters of firms and industries. In EU Strategy 2020 – COM 546/6.10.2010 Initiative “An Union of Innovation”, COM 614/27.10.2010 Initiative “Industrial Policy in the Globalization Era” innovative clusters were considered the “engine” of economic development. They represent a framework for business development, collaboration between companies, universities, research institutions, suppliers, customers and competitors located in the same geographical area. Clusters of small and medium sized firms in developing economies are coming under increased pressure from competition as products mature, technology becomes widely available, and companies seek lower cost locations for production. In this paper, we consider that the cluster is an engine for economic development in our region and we need to have a regional strategy for clusters in Bucharest Ilfov Regional Development Plan for 2014-2020.

Sustainable development of tourism includes itself in world development politics based on respect and care towards the surrounding environment. Spa tourism is one of the ancient types of tourism developed by mankind and it attracts presently more people than those who have health problems. Romania has numerous spa resorts at several levels such as local, regional, national or international ones, and they are all based on diverse tourism resources. Spa tourism is also present in the West Development Region and its revival can be attained by taking into consideration the principles of sustainable development.

The paper provides an assessment of the effectiveness of the use and management of municipal real property (MRP), using data gathered through 173 questionnaires, addressed to representatives of 39 municipalities in Bulgaria. The paper is structured as follows: The first section gives information about the municipalities and is based on the following criteria: evaluation of the conditions in the cities; appraisal of the financial situation of the municipalities, the main sources of funding, and the sources that should be used in order to improve the their finances; existence of the relevant planning instruments, etc. The second section focuses on MRP and refers to criteria such as: rating of different aspects of MRP; existence of MRP inventory, municipal strategy and municipal unit dealing exclusively with MRP; evaluation of the selling values and the level of actual MPR rents in comparison to market rents; outsourcing of MRP management functions; assessment of the interdependence between different units of the municipalities; analysis of the focus of the attention of the elected decision makers. The paper ends with some conclusions concerning the identified problems in the process of MRP management in Bulgaria.

Creative industries comprise the creation, production, marketing and distribution of products and services resulting from human creativity. The European cultural and creative industries (CCI) represent a significant set of industries. Social, cultural and technological changes have helped fuel our thirst and demand for cultural products, new forms of entertainment, distraction, and inspiration creative and cultural industries manufacturing and production activities are the most regionally concentrated, and consumer oriented activities such as retail the least regionally concentrated. In this paper, we consider that the creative and cultural cannot be seen simply as cyclically dependent service functions to the rest of the economy. In Bucharest Ilfov region the cultural and creative industries is a model of economic development.

The management of environmental resources at regional level is closely related to social, economic and community’s activities. Community’s activities should be led taking into account the environmental sustainability. Preserving and improving environment’s quality is one of the main national objectives in nowadays Romania. Under these circumstances the main purpose of our research is to highlight the major aspects of this debate. Therefore, the study of social and economic activities impact on the environment is a major issue that modern society has to face today. As a consequence there is necessary a well balanced management for the environment resources in accordance with certain rules and terms, not only at local level, but also at regional and national level.

In the economic field, especially in tourism, initiative and innovation are effective ways to finding new approaches to various problems occurring with time or unforeseen, which leads to greater adaptation to ever-changing environment of economic life and resistance to shocks, experience having a decisive role. In terms of sustainable tourism not any initiative even if it is an innovative one is appropriate, it is the sector where actions must be thought out long-term and to exist concerns in achieving sustainability in all four branches simultaneously (economic, social, environmental and cultural). In order to achieve sustainable development in the true sense it is not enough to only meet the needs to one of them. Therefore, the challenge lies in finding optimal solutions for each branch separately, but also for making their relationship become sustainable. The need to continually adapt and monitoring the results to improve them, have a primary importance. The paper aims at analyzing in terms of advantages and disadvantages of new tourism forms implementation in a fragile environment as delta, which needs special attention in that it can’t be operated at high tourism level, such as mass tourism.

The sustainable development gets a great importance in the context of Romania integration in the EU and globalization, a context in which the intersection of the economic, social environmental but also cultural and recreational sector is more and more complex. Having in mind this complex context, in this paper, we present a personal point of view regarding the potential for growth in tourism of Bucharest-Ilfov region, due to vast range of tourist offer (cultural, business, recreational). The Bucharest-Ilfov region has a great tourism potential: the attraction capacity of the Bucharest urban centre is enriched by the environmental and cultural value of the areas and sites surrounding the capital city. This combination of urban, business, cultural and environmental resources is a powerful basis for developing the tourism sector in the region. The tourism sector must be a priority of the regional development policy, because of the importance of the tourism contribution to growth and job creation so the infrastructure improvement is therefore a necessity for tourism development. In line with the above, the main goal of this paper is to demonstrate the necessity of increasing the economic importance of the tourism sector within the regional economy.

This paper is going to present the current situation and some predictions regarding the development of Bucharest Ilfov region infrastructure, the most developed Romanian regions from economical point of view. The cohesion policy investments must be closely aligned to the objectives of Europe 2020 (there should be a balanced approach to investment, a right balance between different types of investments). For this reason, the development opportunities through infrastructure investments using the EU funds is one of the main priority in order to increase Bucharest-Ilfov attractiveness, accessibility and mobility across the region. The paper will present the regional development trends and the present regional policy implementation practice and first results regarding the infrastructure investments financed through EU funds in order to increase the capital city functions as an engine for development.

Globalization has led to an increased international trade relations between organizations spatially separated. This determined a greater spatial differentiation influenced by local and regional competition production systems. Territoriality has been considered as the main cause for the development of active areas, explaining also the success of certain local systems of production that became competitive on a global scale. The new school of regional competitiveness promoted by Porter (2003) identifies the cluster industry as a source of competitive advantages, supporting the identification and cluster setting – up as an objective of the public policy. In the last few years, clusters became an important basis for the new policies promoted at the level of the European Union. The challenges established through the Lisbon Strategy, respectively “to make the Europe the most competitive and dynamic based knowledge economy”, determinate a new approach of the economic policy in order to increase competitiveness. For the regional economy, the cluster has the aim to develop new strategies focused on the economic sectors of the regional development, by taking into account sectoral advantages. However, in terms of economic activities promoted at regional level, the spatial development is an essential component for increasing EU competitiveness in terms of economic globalization trends, regional networks being considered the most advanced form of cluster in the economic sector.

Environment is the basic factor to continue human survival and long-term prosperity of mankind is unthinkable if we are not able to ensure that future generations can enjoy the full benefits of nature. At the same time, development is needed to tackle poverty in developing countries and to empower people everywhere to live in a civilized manner in a more favorable environment. The aim of this article is to examine if the sustainable development indicators (greenhouse gas emissions, resource productivity and people at risk of poverty or social exclusion) have an impact on the economic growth and if there are significant discrepancies between countries in 2010 compared to the base year of analysis (2000), using this indicators. The analysis focuses particularly on the countries situated in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia). Based on the result obtained, the author shall try to trace, in the conclusion, a few guiding lines which could be of strategic importance for stimulating action and awareness that environmental protection and economic development must be contemporary concerns.

The small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are deeply affected by the current economic crisis, especially due to decrease in demand and much harder access to financing sources. Most of the small and medium-sized companies (over 90% of them) face major difficulties due to decrease in orders and diminution of their financial resources. Other impacts of the financial crisis identified at work within the SMEs environment are the decline in exports, the lower investments and, not least, the psychological effect of the market hindrances. In order to alleviate and/or fight back the impacts of the crisis, programs and measures are envisaged, including certain solutions, both at governmental, as well at local and company level, destined to support the development and efficiency of the viable SMEs. The financing solutions for the SMEs may be oriented also to a modern type of industrial activities organization namely clusters and clusters networks. The concept of cluster has gained a lot of popularity in the past few years, policy-makers, practitioners and scientists having equally referred to it. A lot of policies have been initiated and implemented in Europe in the past few years with the purpose of stepping up the activity of the current clusters and of providing favorable conditions for the creation of new ones, especially innovative clusters. The paper intends to present the records registered in this field by Romania on regional level, and the challenges faced by the Romanian firms under the circumstances of the financial crisis and the lack of institutional framework and of clusters governance tools.

The bill of exchange, the promissory note and the cheque are debt instruments regulated by the bill of exchange law. The debt instruments are differentiated from other instruments used in civil and commercial relations by the inclusion of the debt in the instrument, hence the name of debt instrument. The main features of the debt instruments are: formal, literal and autonomous nature. The debt instruments are formal in the sense that the creation, the existence, the circulation and the exercise and the use of the patrimonial rights included depend on the existence of the elements included in the instrument. Moreover, the high rigorous nature of the debt instruments is reflected by the obligation to meet some requirements regarding the form (the bill of exchange, the promissory note and the cheque imply some compulsory requirements in order to be valid). The debt instruments are literal, in the sense that the existence and the coverage of the patrimonial rights are established through the wording included in the instrument; thus, the juridical relation that caused the issuing of the debt instrument no longer influences the right deriving from the instrument (whether a salespurchase agreement, or a loan or a debt opening); no possibility for the debt instrument to be interpreted or completed with other documents. The autonomous nature of the debt instruments can be seen, on the one hand, in relation to the fundamental juridical relation that caused it, and in this case, we shall consider that the individual who issued the instrument has an obligation which is not under the existing fundamental relation but exclusively under the instrument which the individual signed; on the other hand, each new signatory has an autonomous juridical position and acquires a new, original right, not a transferred right. The autonomy of the debt instruments explains the principle according to which the holder of the instrument exercises one’s own right and exceptions cannot be opposed to him, namely the protection measures that could be opposed to the previous holders (principle of non-opposability of exceptions).

There might be some specific problems for Central East European Countries (CEE/ CEEC) to comply with the additionality principle and to avoid excessive deficits at the same time. The main reason is that the budgets of the CEECs still face some risks for revenues and expenditures. Therefore, maintaining structural expenditure at a stable level without allowing for temporary public deficits will be difficult for CEECs. In this paper we will provide several arguments that suggest not targeting the EU structural assistance exclusively at the reduction of regional disparities within CEECs. Doing so would not only face problems due to missing administrations and statistics at the regional level, but might also be at the expense of national economic growth and extend the process of catching-up. Each CEEC has it own specificity that is reflected more or less on capital region. According our analysis we will find what are the opportunities for investments in this Capital regions.

While the financial markets have to face systemic and systematic risks, especially the insurance industries, the national supervisory authorities intend to implement regulation systems as uniform as possible at regional level and in the same time as conservatory as possible from the point of view of the risks accepted. The present paper intends to accurately analyze the regulation systems of important insurance markets (as tradition or volume of premiums) – such as RBC, SST, Solvency II in order to stress the similarities of these models but more important the differences that generated a different rigidity degree of the insurance companies, in other words, a different minimum capital requirement. The paper intends to illustrate the financial and organizational impact of the European model Solvency has on the insurance companies, through its supplemental requirements, introduced by the supervisory authorities as a reaction to the recent financial crises.

In the midst of struggling with the global economic crisis the European Union is working to maintain its integrity while applying the motto “United in diversity”. Even while turning a deaf ear to the euro-enthusiasts and the euro-skeptics one wanders just how cohesive this diverse unity is. To analyze this is to dwell into the cohesion principle that underpins the whole European construct, going beyond the models presented by politicians – a Europe of the Regions or The United States of Europe. Our aim is to identify the disparities that might exist so far as economic and social cohesion in Romania goes. Thus, continuing a previous study concerning economic and social cohesion in Romania in the year 2010, based on a methodology developed by professor Shalom H. Schwartz from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, we set out to research the cohesion elements in the Southern and Eastern regions in our country and compare the findings of the two scientific inquiries. The existence of significant disparities among the South-Eastern part of Romania and the whole country would add to the concerns expressed by the authors of the previous study regarding the low level of economic and social cohesion in our country.

Tourism is one of the most important sectors of the global economy, given its contribution as the main generator of jobs and sustainable development path for developing countries. Many experts consider this sector as one of the sectors with the greatest potential to deliver internationally development and economic growth. Thus, tourism can be an important driver of economic growth and prosperity, especially in emerging economies, and a key element in reducing poverty and regional disparities. Despite its potential contribution to economic growth, development of the tourism sector may be hampered by a number of economic and legal barriers that can affect its competitiveness. In this context, the World Economic Forum proposes, through the Tourism Competitiveness Index (TCI), in addition to a methodology for identifying key factors that contribute to increasing the competitiveness of tourism, also tools for analysis and evaluation of these factors. Thus, this study2 aims at analyzing the determinants underlying TCI in terms of two directly competing states, Romania and Bulgaria, to highlight the positive effects through the benefits of the analyzed markets, in terms of competitiveness in tourism sector. The purpose of this analysis is to provide some answers, especially from the perspective of the necessity of strategies that should be adopted on market competitiveness in the two countries and the exposure of the factors that could explain the different performance of the two national economies in the tourism sector.

Integration of Central and Eastern countries in European Union assumes obtaining certain benefits. Upon joining the European Union internal market and free movement of labour, absorption of European funds could help the convergence go on and reduce disparities between countries. This study aims to provide insights in regionalization, absorption of European funds and economic growth. There are various ways of defining the regional growth. The most common refer to the increase of the total output of a region, output increase per employed person, output increase per capita. In turn, the output can be assessed by the gross production of a region, the region’s gross domestic product or net domestic product of that region. The paper proposes an integrated analysis of European situation by means of data and statistics provided by European and national statistics institutions. A better absorption of European funds can lead to growth and economic development and thus reduce regional economic disparities. One of the main objectives should be the absorption as much financial support as possible by continuous efforts from the Central and Eastern European Countries and also regional and local government involved in every stage of the process.

The evaluation process is a basic element of modern public sector management practice. If this process is well conducted, it can contribute to improved public interventions, increased transparency, accountability and cost-effectiveness. In the European Union, old Member States have a relatively long record of conducting evaluations and acting on their results, especially regarding Structural Funds. For Romania and other new Member States, this process is being introduced increasingly, in particular, after integration. The study analyses the estimated impact of Regional Operational Programme 2007-2013 in Romania.

The economic crisis in Romania has increased the business vulnerability since 2009. The recessionary gap and the high uncertainty of the economic environment have determined many companies to leave the market. The regional differences in the entrepreneurial performance suggest that the regional dimension should be included in the firm demography analysis. Most studies refer to the favorable conditions which stimulate the entry of new firms. However, during the crisis, for many small businesses the main problem has been the survival. The paper focuses on the analysis of adjustment processes within the SME´s sector in terms of changes in number of enterprises and turnover. The regional differences in the three-year survival rate (2008-2011) show the structural particularities of the economic activity. The paper aims at identifying the empirical relationship between economic determinants and entrepreneurial performance at regional NUTS2 level in Romania.

Taking a closer look at the spatial distribution of industrial sectors, it becomes quite obvious that there is an increasing disposition for industries to concentrate in certain regions in order to benefit of agglomeration assets. In this context, we consider necessary to analyze how industrial agglomerations have evolved over time and to what extent major transformations have affected agglomeration phenomenon in lagging regions of Eastern countries, finally our paper bringing supportive evidence from Romania and Bulgaria. To what extent, have patterns of industrial agglomeration modified during the transition period? Has relocation of economic activities taken place? What are the main determinants of industrial concentration patterns? These are some crucial questions that we try to find a realistic response through the present paper. Eastern economies are notably challenging from this point of view because they experienced several decades long economic development period which was earmarked by socialist industrialization. Under the planned economy, these countries have faced more barriers to an efficient geographical allocation of economic activities across regions than their peers in the Western Europe especially because they faced the legacy of a planned economy system that determined locations for economic activities based on political decisions, not based on economic efficiency. Thus, our effort can be seen as a contribution to knowledge about agglomeration in the non-Western countries in general, and in developing regions in particular. Focusing our study on two-digit industrial sectors of 14 regions at NUTS2 level, this paper aims to identify and explain the changes regarding the evolution of industrial agglomerations in the last years across Romania compared to Bulgaria. In the end, our analysis will be able to conclude in what manner the effects of transition period influenced the patterns of industrial agglomeration in these two neighboring countries.

The paper discusses the role of logistics for industrial districts, highlighting the current status and defining a logistics model supporting the relationships between providers and users of logistic services within the local context of an industrial district. A comparison with industrial parks, with reference to Romanian ones, allows identifying the potential of adaptation for industrial district logistic models to industrial parks.

E-government development is considered one of the crucial factors for achieving an advanced stage of development in Albania. The number of e-government services introduced to the user in Albania is increasing, although its development and ICT development in general is not in the same level as other countries of the region, due to a lot of problems which Albania faces regarding it. This paper firstly presents a review of e – government for developing countries. The paper then presents the actual situation of ICT development in Albania, with a focus on e – government development stages and services. The paper then proposes an analytical framework for e – government development problems within the context of developing countries, such as Albania.

The world economic situation has brightened in 2010. However, multiple risks threaten to undermine the prospects of a sustained recovery and a stable world economy – including sovereign debt problems in many developed regions, and fiscal austerity. These risks are further magnified by the extraordinary shocks that have occurred in 2011, which have included natural disasters and political unrest, as well as rising and volatile energy and commodity prices. Given that for shipping, all stands and falls with worldwide macroeconomic conditions, the developments in world seaborne trade mirrored the performance of the wider economy. After contracting in 2009, international shipping experienced an upswing in demand in 2010, and recorded a positive turnaround in seaborne trade volumes especially in the dry bulk and container trade segments. However, the outlook remains fragile, as seaborne trade is subject to the same uncertainties and shocks that face the world economy. This paper highlights some developments that are currently affecting maritime transport and have the potential to deeply reshape the landscape of international shipping and seaborne trade.

It is no doubt that thinking about inequality plays a part in the judgments and actions of politicians, sociologists, economists and ordinary people, too. This paper examines which factors substantially influenced regional employment. Labour market, employment and unemployment have been the subject of various researches and the labour market object has been subject of dispute. Employment and unemployment are both decomposed and analyzed through separate components (such as: full employment, effective employment, atypical employment, precarious employment, regional/local employment etc., respectively, total unemployment, partial or hidden unemployment, technical and structural one and so on). The specific literature about the regional inequalities considered the income per capita as the most relevant indicator measured by Gini coefficient. Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. At regional level we studied several indicators that generate regional disparities, and influence employment quality such us: employment rate, tertiary and medium employment, unemployment rate, occupied population in informal sector, employment in primary sector, rural employment, female employment. We developed a scoring based on the deviation from the average of a group of key indicators and devised a map of employment quality resulting from multi-criteria analysis.

The paper aims at exploring the partnership and cooperation issues in cross-border areas in European Union. The theoretical part of the papers is defining the role of the borders in the framework of the European Union enlarged and it includes a review of forms of cooperation and principles applicable in cross-border cooperation considered by the Council of Europe and the European Union or the Association of European Border Regions. Further there are identified in the specific literature important challenges and key points that are marking the cross-border partnerships. The last part of the paper is focusing on some examples of cross-border cooperation, making distinction between two main situations: the border between Member States and the borders between EU and neighboring countries.

When it comes to its results, the 2007-2013 cohesion policy has already faced a serious criticism: the experts consider that the actual functioning of this policy takes up a lot of resources whereas a good set of other policies could produce the conditions for healthier growth. Possible improvements are discussed in relation to the increase in competitiveness, with the industrial structure, human resources, accessibility, innovation, environmental quality as the main drivers. They are expressed by the “Europe 2020” agenda, which envisages as thematic priorities the smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, connected to the headline targets translated into the national ones. However, voices especially from the lagging behind countries express worries about the chances offered to these countries by the new cohesion policy architecture to support their current priorities, predicted to manifest after 2013 as well. One of the possible responses consists in the contribution of various national and sub-national economic policies to economic, social and territorial cohesion combined with the assessment of the relative importance of the EU cohesion policy in the design and implementation of national economic policies meant to promote cohesion (e.g. EPRC, 2010). Based on these overall considerations, this paper proposes a discussion on the challenges to the Romania’s regional policy in the next programme period, aiming at revealing how the new objectives can be reached given the existing economic and institutional framework on the one hand and the drawbacks of the previous financial exercise on the other hand: in other words, it examines whether the facts of the past and present can serve as useful lessons about “do’s” and “don’ts “ in the 2014-2020 period.

The purpose of this article is to present the situation of EU funds absorption for modernization the agricultural holdings in Moldova, geographical region considered to be among the poorest in Romania. After 1989, the essential changes in the land structures ownership on the replacement the old structures land ownership of socialist economy with private property, have profoundly marked the Romanian rural space and the food trade balance of Romania suffered a continuing deterioration. The funding based on projects implemented once the SAPARD preaccession funds, has provided many perspectives Romanian farmers, especially by increasing the budget for investments in the field. This approach shows that the economic performance of representative agricultural holdings in Moldova has evolved positively, but differently across the region.

The interest of Kazakhstan for Central Asia is the interest of a ‘constructor’. Since 1991, it has been at the direct or indirect origin of several key initiatives: CICA, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and even a project of a Union of Central Asia. Theories of regional integrations have been enriching Asia for 20 years, and for 60 years in Europe. The key concept is that of a regional axis: a region is multilateral but needs to build itself around a privileged bilateralism among two neighbors-partners. The definition of such an “axis” is: two countries that have born among themselves the seeds of tension but that decide, voluntarily, to turn the page of history, through a strong and enduring bilateral relationship, sometimes through a founding Treaty, investing in the irreversible, political link with the aim of ‘radiating’ throughout the region.

Migration represents one of the main means humans have chosen for improving their standards of living. Even though it is an important phenomenon manifested since ancient times, migration has never been so much in the attention of scholars and policy makers as it is in present times, especially for its implications in different areas such as demography, economy, sociology, politics, etc. As well, migration is a vital component of the contemporary society and in the same time plays a key role in the development of regions, from various perspectives such as economic, social, or cultural. Taking into consideration the previously outlined framework, the present paper aims at analyzing in a descriptive manner the international migration phenomenon in the European Union (EU) countries between 2006 and 2010, in order to highlight the frame in which Romania is placed from the perspective of the quantitative dimension of international migration.

The paper deals with the idea that the global economic crisis’ challenges for the EU economy are too powerful and the enlargement process has to be very carefully managed. Even that there are five candidate countries and an acceding country, the socio-economic situation across the EU27 and, especially, across the Euro area are not able to support new entrances as Member States. The analysis in the paper is based on the latest official data and is supported by pertinent statistical tables and diagrams. The main conclusion of this analysis is a pessimistic one. We consider that the main objective of the EU27 is to survive and to support a real economic recovery, nowadays. The enlargement has to continue only after the above objectives’ achievement.

The evaluation process is a basic element of modern public sector management practice. If this process is well conducted, it can contribute to improved public interventions, increased transparency, accountability and cost-effectiveness. In the European Union, old Member States have a relatively long record of conducting evaluations and acting on their results, especially regarding Structural Funds. For Romania and other new Member States, this process is being introduced increasingly, in particular, after integration. The study has a major key-objective: to present the main categories of evaluation used for assessing the Structural Fund expenditure and the logical framework process and to examine how the evaluation co-financed public programmes is organized and conducted in the EU.

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as an engine of both growth and economic development. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) account for 99,8% of all businesses in Europe and their role in the economic growth and job creation has been recognized at the regional, national and European level. This leads the policy makers at all levels to look for measures enhancing the firm creation activity and in the same time they have to harmonize with Universities Curricula. In the Information Era network is a current tool that build bridges and develop business and people’s knowledge.

FDI analysis is usually performed within the frame of the win-win hypothesis. However, we believe that certain circumstances (MNEs following their own business objectives, lack of appropriate regulations, non-observance of the arm’s length principle) may generate disproportionate advantages at the level of FDI stakeholders. The disequilibrium between reinvested profits and repatriated profits may be viewed as a proof of such disproportionate advantages of stakeholders involved in FDI. In addition to figures showing the comparison between reinvested and repatriated profits, as well as the way in which such indicators vary e.g. in case of abnormal business conditions (global economy collapse), we try to show that lack/misuse of transfer pricing regulations may generate even more disequilibrium, the MNEs using intra-group transactions as an additional way of repatriating non-taxable/low tax profits.

This paper aims at analyzing the level and nature of regional disparities in Vâlcea County. The main objectives of the paper are: to present the most relevant aspects of Vâlcea County, to individualize different types of territorial disparities after the rank of county localities (cities, towns and villages), using mainly the statistical analysis method and the graphic method, to identify the advantaged and disadvantaged geographic areas in Vâlcea County and to propose solutions to reduce the identified disparities in accordance with the trends set in the European Union (Strategy 2020).

The problematic of energy policy is nowadays widely disputed in the European Union community. In a global context characterized by highly and raising dependency of the economic activity on the energetic resources, the European authorities had launched a strategy in this sector which regards the problems of access to secure and affordable energy products. The aim of this paper is linked to the natural gas field of the European energetic concerns, and it assumes the high dependency of internal consumption on imports, more than half of the natural gas that is used in the 27 states comes from abroad. Ensuring a higher level of security in the supply is one of the goals that European Union wants to achieve on medium and long term. In these circumstances, actual measurements take into account different type of actions: stabilize relations with existing partner gas exporters (Russia, Algeria, Norway); diversification of transport routes coming from these countries, especially in the idea of trying to avoid transit countries (mainly Ukraine and Belarus); and finally opening discussions and investing in alternative routes which should transport the gas from new suppliers placed in the Caspian Sea or Central Asia region.

The paper introduces a conceptual framework for an accounting of the municipal real property, and defines a respective system of indicators. The development of this framework is seen as an important prerequisite for the efficient property management. It aims to overcome the lack or poor accessibility of the information, and thus to ensure the successful municipal real property management in a strategic context. The developing of the applied approach implies that accounting indicators are divided into three main groups – values, revenues, and costs. Beside the above mentioned classification, the municipal revenues and costs are classified also as existing and proposed. The existing indicators are defined by International Accounting Standards in public sector, and some of them are considered as being appropriate for the inclusion in the financial analysis as accounting system entries. The proposed indicators are perceived as appropriate to carry out a detailed analysis of the municipal property at a lower level of desegregations. The first two paragraphs explain the main bases for the municipal property valuation – historical cost, current price, market value, present value, with a special emphasis on the use of the historical value, and the types of valuation respectively. The next three paragraphs are concentrated mainly on the accounting indicators for the municipal property assessment. The sixth paragraph represents several major accounting bases – an accounting value, a carrying value, a market value, an accumulated depreciation, revenues from the sale of assets and services, costs by economic elements, revenues from future periods and costs for future periods, and revenues from other events and costs for other events. The seventh section presents a brief comparative analysis of accounting systems of 6 municipalities in South-Eastern Europe and the last paragraph highlights the identified “good practices”.

The paper presents a system of financial indicators for the efficiency of use of municipal real property. Such a system must provide for meeting the information needs of a number of internal and external consumers and is of primary significance in the analysis of municipalities’ overall financial condition. The following may be pointed out as the major aspects of the practical analysis: i) the analysis of the municipality’s provision with immoveable property; ii) the analysis of the efficient use of certain categories of municipal real property. The paper aims at clarifying the major moments in the analysis of the structure, composition, and effective use of municipal real property, and the determination of definite indicators to be applied to this analysis oriented towards its implementation. The wide variety of parameters is reduced to a system of 16 indicators: reporting value, depreciation, ratio of replacement, ratio of cost efficiency, ratio of revenue efficiency, return on total assets, return on revenues, return on expenses, ratio of the fitness, ratio of the repair, ratio of real energy provision, ratio of workload, present value of a series of regular cash flows, equivalent yield model, return on investment, return on investment. The paper presents the structure and content of the indicators of the analysis of the municipal real property, as well as the input of these indicators. The estimation (values) necessary to determine the indicators, the indicators themselves and their meaning make it possible to study the effectiveness of the operations (functioning) of the municipal real property in terms of description of its physical condition, structure, content, purpose and functions, which generates revenues or brings expenditures to the municipality. The system of indicators provides for decision making with a view to boosting the efficiency of public sector management and more specifically – the management of municipal real property.

Territorial cohesion is an important target of European Union, constantly promoted by its institutions and their representatives. In the context of the Europe 2020 strategy, one of the most important support documents, the region represents a very important issue, being considered to be the key to its successfulness. The region is seen as a support for the smart growth and all the operational policy concepts try to make use of the spatial potential, by taking better account of the territorial specificities. Two main questions play attention: the need to transform the present-day developmental regions into administrative ones is a priority? What kind of regionalization it must to be promoted? Correlating these issues with already defined territorial cohesion, the administrative region is a real tool for the future territorial development. The experience of the last 14 years asks urgently the building of a new territorial administrative reform, giving competences to regions. For instant, each development region is a construction resulted from a free association of the counties. Their role in the regional development is much reduced one, because their regional councils are not elected; decisions taken at this level are consultative for the social, economical, cultural or political actors.

In this article, we proposed the introduction in literature of a new source of uncertainty in modeling and forecasting: the indicators’ inadequacy. Even if it was observed, a specific nominalization in the context of forecasting procedure has not been done yet. The inadequacy of indicators as a supplementary source of uncertainty generates a lower degree of accuracy in forecasting. This assumption was proved using empirical data related to the prediction of unemployment rate in Romania on the horizon 2011-2013. Four strategies of modeling and predicting the unemployment rate were proposed, observing two types of indicators’ inadequacy: the use of transformed variables in order to get stationary data set (the difference between the unemployment rates registered in two successive periods was used instead of the unemployment rate) and the utilization of macro-regional unemployment rates whose predictions are aggregated in order to forecast the overall unemployment rate in Romania. The results put in evidence that the predictions of the total unemployment rate using moving average models of order 2 are the most accurate, being followed by the forecasts based on the predictions of active civil population and number of unemployed people. The strategies based on the aggregation of the predictions for the four macroregional unemployment rates imply a higher inadequacy and consequently a lower degree of forecasts’ accuracy.

One of the specific objectives of the Sectoral Operational Programme Environment SOP ENV is to Improve the quality and access to water and wastewater infrastructure, by providing water supply and wastewater services in most urban areas by 2015 and by setting efficient regional water and wastewater management structures. (Priority Axis 1 – Water: regional projects). In order to implement the investments needed to comply with the relevant EU environmental directives for improving the quality of water services and environment, the regional operators have access to the EU Funds from the current programming period 2007-2013. For the Priority Axis 1 the allocated funds raise up to 2,78 billion Euros from Cohesion Funds and 0,49 Billion Euros from national cofinancing. The paper presents a comparative approach of current status of the regionalization process in the water sector in Romania as well main problems encountered by the regionalization process, in general and the regional operators, in particular, presenting some solutions and success factors in the regionalization process in the Romanian water sector.

Regional economic integration provides both, developing countries and the least developed, the ability to enjoy the benefits of a larger „European “market, whether it is their home or their adoptive home. This issue gains a larger dimension in the context of economic crisis and euro zone. The argument for this statement is that regional development disparities may negatively affect economic cohesion from European space. There were identified two obstacles of the efficient use of European resources. The first one is the geographic barrier: the inability to make labor division due to barrier restrictions. The second one is the lack of an entrepreneurial culture. The entrepreneurial culture provides the flexibility of economy – in particular, the structural flexibility to cope with changes in the division of labor. These disparities can be gradual changed, and they are primarily result from autonomous technological innovations made in response to depletion of resources or affected environment. Analyzing regional development disparities there were applied well known research methods: analytical and statistical method. The analysis consists on selecting and describing a set of indicators “measures” for regional competitiveness, able to show the situation of the region in metric terms, but also from economic point of view.

Nowadays, we talk about economic crisis, financial crisis, political crisis, Eurozone’ crisis and the criticisms on 2007-2013 EU cohesion policy is facing makes me wonder if it isn’t about a crisis of European integration? The economic booms of 1993-2007 as well as the recession started by the end of 2008 have fallen unequally across EU population, regions and cities, increasing spatial economic inequality. This is because regions differ with respect to their local economic activity, employment opportunities, social and cultural infrastructure, public services, governance structure, environmental quality and so on. Therefore, EU cohesion policy must not be concerned only with reduction of regional inequalities of prosperity across Europe, but also with the construction of a European regional identity, with the aim to promote regional development in a globalized world. Through this paper I want to explore the question of whether there is a path not to lose our European sense in these tormentors’ times. This is because the EU anti-crisis marathon started and there are already many debates regarding the Multiannual Financial Framework for the EU Budget 2014-2020 and which instruments must be developed in order to maintain the accent of cohesion policy over the delivery of the Europe 2020 objectives.