Similarities and dissimilarities between the EU agricultural and rural development model and Romanian agriculture. Challenges and perspectives

Abstract The main aims of this study are to highlight the differences and the similarities between the European model of agricultural and rural development, and the state of play in the Romanian agricultural sector. Statistically speaking, the agricultural sector's indicators of the past two decades place Romania outside the family picture of the EU countries, with very slight resemblances, and very strong discrepancies between their economic, technical, and institutional characteristics. At present, competition-wise, farming and farmers in Romania are still strongly disfavoured in relation to their competitors in the old EU Member States. In Romania, the economic and institutional mechanisms have most often been devised to the disadvantage of agricultural production, by claiming that subsistence farming would be the sustainable way, and by channelling the added value to other sectors. An option to continue the agricultural policies of the past decades and to abandon the national support lent to agriculture would be particularly risky through its unpredictable and incalculable social and economic effects.