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The absorption of EU funds for Romania is a necessity in the nowadays context. The slow pace of absorption of these structural funds earmarked for Romania as EU member state is a deficiency with negative effects on the economic and social development of our country. Their low absorption shows deficiencies in their coordination and implementation at central level and also at the level of beneficiaries. Their coordinative authorities, in particular the Managing Authority of Structural Instruments, together with its subordinated institutions presents deficiencies in their coordination and implementation as having negative effects on their absorption. The main weaknesses identified on national level mainly consist in the lack of specialized personnel, in excessive bureaucracy and a mismatch of national legislation with the European one. The lack of transparency and change is specific to these structural funds, representing deficiencies that lead to beneficiaries’ discouragement to implement projects financed from structural funds. In the Sectoral Operational Programme, the Human Resources Development Program is a leader in the rate of absorption but it also has the largest number of problems and deficiencies in implementation. Due to the deficiencies identified by the auditing European Commission of the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development, payments were suspended for a period of four months. Following this situation, it was necessary to implement the necessary corrective measures at the level of POSDRU, leading to its release. Taking action and removing the deficiencies at the POSDRU level, and also at the level of other operational programs, it is a necessity and a priority to increase the absorption of these funds. The main measures that need to be taken mainly consist of training the personnel involved in the management of these funds, reimbursements release funds to the final beneficiaries, creating a more transparent system of evaluation of proposals and a better correlation of national legislation with the European one. The challenge is to implement measures identified and increase the absorption of structural funds until the end of their deployment.

Entrepreneurship is an active field of research, having known a major increase in interest and publication levels in the last years (Landström et al., 2012). Within this field recently there has been an increasing interest in understanding why some regions seem to have a significantly higher entrepreneurship activity compared to others. In line with this research field, we would like to investigate the differences in entrepreneurial activity among the Romanian counties (NUTS 3 regions). While the classical research paradigm in this field is to conduct a temporally stationary analysis, we choose to use a time series clustering analysis to better understanding the dynamics of entrepreneurial activity between counties. Our analysis showed that if we use the total number of new privately owned companies that are founded each year in the last decade (2002-2012) we can distinguish between 5 clusters, one with high total entrepreneurial activity (18 counties), one with above average activity (8 counties), two clusters with average and slightly below average activity (total of 18 counties) and one cluster with low and declining activity (2 counties). If we are interested in the entrepreneurial activity rate, that is the number of new privately owned companies founded each year adjusted by the population of the respective county, we obtain 4 clusters, one with a very high entrepreneurial rate (1 county), one with average rate (10 counties), and two clusters with below average entrepreneurial rate (total of 31 counties). In conclusion, our research shows that Romania is far from being a homogeneous geographical area in respect to entrepreneurial activity. Depending on what we are interested in, it can be divided in 5 or 4 clusters of counties, which behave differently as a function of time. Further research should be focused on explaining these regional differences, on studying the high performance clusters and trying to improve the low performing ones.

Grant project management is now a trend in the institutions of various types in Romania due to the opportunities offered by the EU through structural Instruments. Absorbing European funds is a challenge for Romania. The Managing Authority for Structural Instruments, together with the subordinated institutions present deficiencies in their coordination and implementation, the effect being a slow process of absorption of structural and cohesion funds. Taking action to enhance absorption of Structural and Cohesion Funds was done later; some measures are neither effective nor efficient. One of the major problems in implementing the Structural Funds is the continuous change of their national legislation. Therefore it is necessary to take measures to increase the absorption of structural funds and also the national adoption of a stable legal framework applicable to Structural Funds, guides of the applicant and clearly established project calls, without any latest changes, creating a transparent system of project proposals assessment and results communication of assessments to their beneficiaries, the payments required by the reimbursement requests within 45 days specified in the contract and not just their validation, terms compliance in approval notifications and addenda to the contract funding, proper training of the personnel from the intermediate organizations and linking information provided by their staff.

Nowadays, the issues of sustainable development are of great interest and importance, as countries, organisations, institutions worldwide are still searching for the right solutions leading to human well-being and life quality in a society socially acceptable, economically viable and environmentally sustainable, in an integrated vision between states and generations. Due to the difficulties of measuring such a complex, multi-dimensioned concept, one of the main questions refers to necessity and the possibility of determining countries'(tm) progress towards sustainable development. In this respect, there are a very large number of initiatives and efforts to develop the appropri¬ate indicators; yet, there is no one agreed method. In this generous context of analysis, the paper aims to offer some answers regarding Romania'(tm)s progress towards sustainable development, based on a comparative analysis within the European Union, using data provided by three of the most widely used indicators for measuring sustainable development: Human Development Index, Environmental Performance Index and Ecological Footprint. The research methodology uses the comparative analysis and synthesis of data, followed by a dissemination of the results in order to express a personal opinion on the topic. The research results are far from being optimistic, highlighting a serious gap between Romania and the other member states in terms of progress towards sustainable development. Therefore, they call for immediate action and increased efforts, so that European Union'(tm)s objectives of real cohesion and of becoming one of the global leaders in supporting sustainable development can be reached. The merit of this study is its contribution with an original research to the efforts of assessing Romania'(tm)s progress on the path to sustainable development, which may be particularly important for both researchers and policy makers. Due to some limitations induced by the methodology, the research opens the way for future studies, using complementary data and methodology.

In this paper we will present a SWOT analysis on the potential of rural tourism in the region Crisana. Crisana region is a historical region delimited at north by the river Somes and Maramures region, at west by the river Tisa, at south by the Mures river and Banat region, and at east by the peaks of the Apuseni Mountains and Transylvania region. Crisana Region stretches on both Romania and Hungary, and we will refer only to the Romanian side of it. Crisana region has an area of 17,717 km2 and if we refer to the current counties, this region includes much of Arad county, without the area between the river Mures and Timis county, north of Hunedoara county Bihor county and part of western Salaj county

Romania has the highest share of European Union rural areas (44.9% in 2009), which generates and maintains a long series of regional disparities. Because of these disparities, the economy faces a number of elements that undermine the quality of human and social capital and reduces the potential for growth: precarious social and economic infrastructure, reduced access to markets and thus to goods, a low level of both economic cohesion and living standards, and a difficult access to education and training (leading to the underutilization of labor in rural areas, while major shortages in the labor market and increased migration phenomenon manifests).\\r\\n In these circumstances the European Union LEADER initiative is an important chance for the development and tightening of the rural - urban continuum in Romania. A fundamental element of this initiative are the local action groups. These local action groups are conceived rather as an ad hoc framework for exchanging ideas, for debate on matters of local interest, on initiatives to boost economic activities. Thus, these local partnership structures can be self-organized by very real problems and directions: to promote a brand of product made in a certain area, the image of a tourist attraction, of traditional occupations, crafts of products, etc.\\r\\n In this paper, the authors aim to highlight the difficulties of European integration for rural areas in the new Member States, considering that the LEADER initiative would be a good opportunity to accelerate this process. To emphasize this, a review of the progress in implementing the LAGs program in Central and Eastern Europe was undertake. Also, we identified the success factors of this program based on the experience of the European Union developed countries. Finally, we provide arguments in favor of local action groups as the solution to the rural problem of Romania.

The regional development policy of European Union deals with spatial localisation of production and affects the daily life of more than half of the 500 million persons living in the European Union. Conceived at European level as a solidarity policy, it bases especially on financial solidarity through the distribution of a part of the European budget obtained through the contribution of Member States to the less prosper social categories and regions. Regional development policy of European Union for the programming period 2007- 2013 is based on the diversity, opportunities and challenges offered by the regions in Europe. It puts into practice the solidarity between European nations and focuses on a fundamental objective: strengthening the economic, social and territorial cohesion through diminishing the development discrepancies between its regions. The present paper identifies the new directions of the European regional development policy and aims to highlight the importance of this policy for the economic growth and development of Romania. In this difficult period, when Romania felt the effects of the crisis at high level and met a severe economic congestion, the European sources of financing through the regional development policy must not be neglected. We also formulate recommendations in order to increase Romania's structural funds absorption rate.

Starting from the objectives, activities, and the results of the empirical, quantitative, and qualitative research carried out in the AntrES project (AntrES - Project acronym "Entrepreneurship and Equal Opportunities. A new school for women entrepreneurship" – Antreprenoriatul si egalitatea de sanse. Un nou model de scoala antreprenoriala pentru femei), during the two years of implementation, in the Western Romania referring to the new businesses start up; business development; the motivation and difficulties of female entrepreneurs and potentially enterprising women; of their perceptions regarding the need for entrepreneurship education, the role of female entrepreneurship promotion and the impact of the successful models on new businesses start up – this paper presents directions of action meant to emphasize and support the potential of the female entrepreneurship in Romania, as a regional growth and development engine.

The regional development should aim to correlate and integrate tourism among the other integrative parts of the regional and local development, taking into account the fact that a regionâ€(tm)s prosperity as effect of tourism development may be shown clearly in several stages: on the spot (as a result of direct consumption of the tourist product), on short term (through continuous absorption of the work-force and encouraging the welcoming commerce) and in the long run (concentrating capital for investment in the general infrastructure and the one of tourism, in structures of reception for tourism and in the development of urban services). The analysis of intra-regional disparities as part of the economic growth at the level of Region West starts off with the idea that each component county has a different landscape, which favored or inhibited their economic growth; in the same time, each component county has its own specific, which can be promoted through tourism, inducing in time a regional income, and respectively, a social-economic and cultural growth of less developed areas.

In this paper, an approach for recognizing and defining correct and operable performance will be presented with the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of processes in dry ports (inland intermodal hubs). The challenge in evaluating the possible improvements of the underlying processes lies in the special nature and the complex structure of dry ports. It is important to consider that all the processes are highly interconnected and that changes in parameters in one process also have an impact on parameters in other processes. Furthermore, the performance of dry ports, seen as the backbone of the system, has a significant impact on the overall performance of the whole transportation network.

Cities represent today the intrinsic socio-economic complexity of local systems. Looking at the performances of urban systems enable us to explaining the main factors of territorial development. By moving from the theory of "progressive systems", and assigning to the cities some of this theory's properties, it is possible to outline a methodological perspective to capture the emerging phenomena describing the cities' performances. Keeping this view in mind, the aim of the paper is facing the intrinsic socio-economic complexity and heterogeneity of cities within the EU integration policies.. In order to better qualify this issue, we provide a multidimensional scaling approach, as a quantitative method useful to compare the several urban performances by letting a cluster evidence among the EU cities emerge.

The components of demo-social macroeconomic level but especially in the continental context were decisive action on both exponents of the supply and the demand; the businessman need to know features, character and effects of these variables on the functionality they produce while the European market and national. From the range of the demo-social components, I referred to the social classes, the reference groups, the area of residence, taking into consideration reality that these components carries on business in general, particularly on the consumer, a long-term determination so, their knowledge as fair provides managers can develop policies and strategies consistent with these conditions.

Starting from the way in which women, generally speaking, understand entrepreneurship – as a choice or as a necessity, the present paper aims to discover in what percentage women in the West of Romania, have been influenced in the decision to become entrepreneurs or in self-employment option by the “attractiveness” or by “constraint” and, then, in what proportion, considering the general entrepreneurs inclination, to start business in the fields that they have worked before, validates in their case the hypotheses that women choose the sector in which they have knowledge and experience. The first part of the paper analyses the literature in the field emphasizing on the occupational situation and professional training as factors of the feminine entrepreneurship, respective activity fields preferred by women for self-employment. The second part of the paper presents the preliminary research results regarding the correlations between occupational status, professional studies and activity fields in the case of feminine entrepreneurship in the West of Romania, results of AntrES project. The paper analyses the answers given into the questionnaires applied and reapplied to one of the aim groups of the project – manager women – in the period 17-31 July 2009, respective 20-28 November 2009 – at the beginning and at the end of the Entrepreneurial school at the level of AntrES territorial centers (county residence towns: Arad, Baia Mare, Oradea, Reşiţa, Satu Mare, Timişoara).

Demographic ageing appeared in the modern society and designates an important increase in the elderly population segment in the total of the senior population and has implications for all sections of the society. The main cause of this phenomenon is transition from the traditional system of population’s reproduction, with high birth rates, to modern regime, with both low birth rates and mortality. On long term, these new demographic tendencies will affect both the educational system, in the sense of reducing the number of pupils and students, as well as the expansion of the demand for health services and social protection.

The need for capital investment, which amounts to a level well above current economic possibilities, imposes as an objective condition the use of foreign capital in the form attracting direct capital investments. Investments are an important driving force

Starting from the results of a national survey, a questionnaire on the values of Romanians was applied in April 2008 which was used for a comparative analysis of historical regions of Romania: Moldova, Bucharest, Dobrogea, Transilvania and Muntenia. Ou

The paper gives a critical assessment of the theses of UNWTO that tourism is an effective means of developing whole regions especially difficult aeries such as mountain regions. Growth Pole Theory and Economic Base Theory are used as methodological base.