A STUDY OF ROMANIA'S TERRITORIAL DIVISION AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The complex and extremely important topic of the administrative division of Romania is again of interest after the firm statements of the new Government (2012) concerning the imminent adoption of the law concerning the regionalisation of the country. If, after the Law 151 from 1948 and the Law 315 from 2004 concerning the regional development in Romania were passed, they were extremely slow to be put into administrative practice and used to support sustainable development, to attract and use European funds (the fundamental reason of the policy of regional development in the European Union), regionalising Romania nowadays seems to be completely different. Older concerns concerning the optimisation of the administrative division of Romania and the analysis of the present development regions determined us to present, below, a few points of view on the matter. The present study focuses on the need to justify regional development economically, socially, legally, historically, geographically, and from the point of view of the traditions, but completely independent from political influence, administrative interests, etc. The study presents the points of view of its authors, which are confident that it could be improved by economists, sociologists, historians, geographers, jurists etc. and submitted to Romanian decision-makers (Parliament, Government, etc.) as possible variants, as alternative solutions that support this legislative initiative of great importance for Romania.