Sustainable Regional Development Policy in Romania - Coordinates

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1 DOI /vjes Sustainable Regional Development Policy in Romania - Coordinates Constanta POPESCU Ana-Lucia RISTEA Constantin POPESCU Valahia University of Târgovişte, Romania tantapop@yahoo.com Abstract The regional development policy appears as a coherent set of planned measures enlisted in the National Development Programme and in the National Regional Development Plans and promoted by the authorities of the central end local administration, based on the principle of partnership with various actors (private, public or volunteers), in order to assure a dynamic and sustainable economic and social growth, by an efficient valorification of the regional and local potential. The definition of the regional development policy in Romania needs to answer two pressures, namely: one of general order, which imposes the acceptance of the EU rules and objectives and the coordination of the regional development policy with the way the regional development policy is understood and applied at the level of the community countries; the second, of particular order, springs from the situation Romania experiences, namely its still insufficient preparation to face the extremely competitive environment of the unique market within the EU. To implement a regional development policy compatible and comparable to the EU policy in this domain, according to the Green Charter of Regional Development in Romania, elaborated by the Government of Romania and the European Commission, even since the year 1997, eight development regions have been defined (which must not be viewed as administrative-territorial units, as they do not have juridical personality, so that they must not be mistakenly taken for the counties). Keywords: sustainable development, regional development, policy, strategy, economic development JEL Classification: Q01, R58 The regional development policy appears as a coherent set of planned measures written down in the National Development Programme and the National Regional Development Plans and promoted by the authorities of the central and local administration, based on the principle of partnership with various actors (private, public or 17

2 volunteer), in order to assure a dynamic and sustainable economic and social growth, by an efficient valorification of the regional and local potential (Moşteanu N. R., 2003). The definition of the regional development policy in Romania needs to answer two pressures, namely: one of general order, which imposes the acceptance of the EU rules and objectives and the coordination of the regional development policy with the way the regional development policy is understood and applied on the level of the European community countries; the second, of particular order, springs from the situation Romania is in, namely still insufficiently prepared to face the extremely competitive external environment on the unique market inside the EU. In order to implement a regional development policy compatible and comparable to the EU policy in this domain, according to the Green Charter of Regional Development in Romania, elaborated by the Romanian Government and the European Commission, even since the year 1997, eight development regions have been designed, which must not be viewed as administrative-territorial units, as they do not have juridical personality, so that they must not be mistakenly taken for counties. These eight development regions are also the framework for the collection of specific statistical data, according to the European regulations emitted by EUROSTAT for the territorial classification level NUTS II, existing in the EU. The statistical data confirm the existence of great gaps in the development levels of these eight regions, but also of great disparities, inside them, between the counties development levels. The areas with specific development problems (issues related to the agricultural sector, industrial decline, poorly-developed infrastructure or environmental pollution problems) have been defined as problem areas or priority areas. These areas usually appear as groups of towns, communes or counties correlated from the viewpoint of the territory, with similar issues to be solved by means of regional development policies. Thus, the areas with economic or social problems were classified into three great categories (National Development Plan , 2000): 1. Traditionally underdeveloped areas, where one can find the negative effect resulted from the synergy of: high level of structural unemployment, high ratio of the population employed in agriculture, inadequate mortality rate. In this category have been included areas of the counties: Botoşani and Vaslui (North-East Development Region), Giurgiu and Teleorman (South Development Region), Maramureş and Bistriţa Năsăud (North-West Development Region). 2. Areas of industrial decline, where the transition process led to the considerable reduction of the number of jobs (especially in the mining and processing industry). Compared to the traditional underdeveloped areas, the areas of industrial decline have a relatively satisfactory infrastructure and a business environment largely permissive for a good functioning of the market economy mechanisms. In this category were included areas of the counties: Botoşani and Suceava (North-East Development Region), Brăila and Buzău (South-East Development Region), Giurgiu, Teleorman and Călăraşi (South Development Region), Hunedoara (North-West Development Region) and Braşov (Center Development Region). 3. Structurally fragile areas, characterized by the dependence of the employed population on only one branch or sub-branch of the heavy industry or, in some cases, on a single company generating losses in the economy. In time, these areas were transformed in areas of industrial decline. This third category includes areas of the counties: Neamţ (North-East Development Region), Brăila and Galaţi (South-East Development Region), Călăraşi, Teleorman and Dâmboviţa (South Development Region), Gorj (South-West 18

3 Development Region), Hunedoara (West Development Region) and Satu Mare (North- West Development Region). It ought to be remembered that there are counties containing areas with several types of problems in their economic-social development. For instance, in the South Development Region, Teleorman County holds areas corresponding to all the three categories mentioned above. In the Development Plan, for example, the strategic goals of Romania s regional development concerned: promoting the mechanisms of the market economy in all the regions of the country, in order to improve competitiveness and realize a permanent economic growth; promoting a harmonious spatial development of the network of localities; increasing the regions capacity of supporting their own development process; creating equal chances in point of the access to information, technological research-development, continual education and training of the population in the peripheral areas; promotion of differentiated policies, according to the particularities of the areas; reducing the development gaps between counties, between urban and rural areas, between central and peripheral areas; preventing the appearance of problem areas. The national development priorities during the period , enlisted in the Development Strategy of the National Development Plan elaborated for this period, are structured starting from a limited number of national development priorities, assuring the concentration of the resources available on the realization of those objectives and measures with maximal impact on reducing the gaps in relation to the EU and the internal disparities. At the same time, considering the role of the National Development Plan, during the period , namely to substantiate the access to the EU Structural and Cohesion Plans, these priorities need to be compatible with the intervention domains of these instruments, according to the community regulations. Based on the sectorial and regional socio-economic analyses and SWOT analyses, the Ministry of Public Finances had in view the following propositions concerning the national development policies for the programming period : - increasing economic competitiveness and developing the knowledge-based economy; - developing and modernizing the transport infrastructure; - protecting and improving environmental quality; - developing the human resources, increasing the employment degree and fighting social exclusion; - developing rural economy and increasing productivity in the agricultural sector; - supporting a balanced participation of all the Romanian regions to the socioeconomic development process. 19

4 Box 1. Coordinates of a sustainable development strategy The implementation of a strategy supporting the realization of sustainable development imposes, as a premise, the existence of an informational database, permitting the construction of a system of indicators quantitative and qualitative necessary, on the one hand, to the evaluation of the economic-social potential of a region / county under its multiple aspects of State, structure, dynamics and behaviour of the actors on the various markets and, on the other hand, to the exercise of a certain orientation of the decision factors at the level of the local communities on the sense of development, in order to maintain efficiency and the state of balance. The specialists classify sustainable development indicators into five great subsystems (Toderoiu F., Bucur Carmen, 2005): 1. The subsystem of the factorial indicators, including: demo-economic and natural resources, production means, techno-scientific progress, and management factors (those factors contributing to the organization of the economic agents structure, of the areas and of the territory, of the decision system facilitating an efficient resource use); 2. The subsystem of the resultative indicators, including the principal indicators characterizing: material production and consumption services, education, culture, art, tourism, public administration management; 3. The subsystem of the distribution and regulation indicators, where an important place is occupied by indicators of: banking, payment balance, revenues and goods repartition; 4. The subsystem of the demographic and social indicators, concerning both data on the population, and social indicators (indicators of habitat, socio-professional mobility, cultural level, social homogenization, delinquency etc.) 5. The subsystem of national welfare indicators, having in view a set of categories of indicators: (a) indicators of natural resources; (b) environment value; (c) indicators of human capital (active population, health stock, public tuition rate on forms of education); (d) indicators of financial capital; (e) value of the cultural patrimony; (f) consumption goods of the population (residences, long-term goods). To conclude, sustainable development involves: assuring sustainability, the viability of all the components of a society; a permanent support of the development, by factors mainly internal, of cities and villages, companies, research and education etc.; supporting the SMEs as true locomotives of a country s economy; actively promoting the cooperation between the actors involved in the socioeconomic processes, a promotion that ought to benefit of the participation of the public power as well, the State s democratic organisms and the organisms of the civil society ( the competition with positive sum ). 20

5 Sustainable development does not act as an autonomous, independent process. On the contrary, a flow of processes has been constituted, which have a fundamental action, with a strong interaction, with aspects often contradictory, in guiding the contemporary evolutions, namely: (1) sustainable development as a desirable alternative, yet not also objectively achievable, to the development by waste ; (2) the passage to the knowledge-led society, as a new possible stage, subsequent to the capitalism of the great industry of a mechanical type; (3) globalization, as a tendency complementing localization; (4) downsizing processes i.e. proliferation of SMEs and growth of their role; (5) Passage from classical to interventionist liberalism, which generates even the extension of the sphere of competence of the market correction and stimulation actions by the replacement of government by governance. The studies realized by the EU draw the attention to the strong deficit along the governance line of the globalization process: The present stage of globalization and increasing internationalizations and integrations of the economies is strongly marked by a deficit of governance capabilities internationally and globally. In this context, national States remain central actors in the existing system, which imposes a change of behaviour: privatization does not mean diminution of institutions and government s importance; less State does not mean, in a simplistic manner, more market; less entrepreneurial State means more institutions and more governance capabilities; some authors call this: the passage from government to governance; a change in the way of conceiving governmental institutions as support in learning for actions, and not just as instrument promoting the interest of the national State; governance, and not just government, cooperation, not zero-sum games. To conclude, the commitment of a territory to a sustainable development dynamics involves the coordination of all the policies and the mobilization of all the actors into a perspective of synergy around this dynamics. Sustainable development questions the transversability of the collective policies and actions at all the levels. A few examples of interpretations of policies or collective actions pursued in a strategy of territorial development are edifying to highlight the need of convergence with the paradigm of sustainable development (Fournier B., Raveaud P. and Le Fur R. (coord.), 2012, as follows: The actions supporting the companies implanted in the area of a given territory need to permit their own commitment to a sustainable development strategy; in this sense, it is necessary to stimulate the companies to commit to a normative framework such as ISO 26000, Social Corporate Responsibility; In matters of land fund or real estate fund, the first stake is no longer to create new activity areas in the territory, but even before creating even a square meter of land fund or real estate area, it will be necessary to try to valorify the existing ones; creating new areas ought to be viewed as the last solution one could turn to. Therefore, improvement operations are to be privileged, even the requalification of the existing built patrimony. 21

6 In the arrangement domain, one of the essential stakes will be: planning a functional mix of the territory, i.e. the fact of having available, on a territory, the set of necessary functions (dwellings, activities, trade, administrative, cultural, mobility, leisure equipment...) and no longer proceeding to a division of the territory into differentiated functional areas, which are sources of numerous displacements, circulation jams, pollution (noise, greenhouse effect gas...). Sustainable development is an opportunity for the economic development of a territory, because it generates new activities, new jobs and new markets, with synergic effects on the progressive, yet real transformation, of the existing activities. Among these new activities we shall enumerate: State services in the domain of constructions (energy renovation, dwelling habilitation), mobility (non-polluting urban transport development), green areas maintenance, bio food etc. Bibliography Moşteanu N. R., (2003), Finanţarea dezvoltării regionale în Romania (Funding Regional Development in Romania), Bucureşti, Editura Economică, p. 73. Planul Naţional de Dezvoltare (The Romanian National Development Plan) (2000), Agenţia Naţională de Dezvoltare Regională (National Agency of Regional Development), Bucureşti. Toderoiu F., Bucur Carmen (2005), Economia agroalimentară a României: multifuncţionalitate, resurse, oportunităţi şi restricţii în perspectivă globală (Romania s Agrofood Economy: Malfunctioning, Resources, Opportunities and Constraints from a Global Perspective), Collection Biblioteca economică (Economic Library) - Series Studii şi Cercetări Economice (Economic Studies and Research), vol. 25/2005, Centrul de Informare şi Documentare Economică (Economic Information and Documentation Center), Institutul Naţional de Cercetări Economice Costin C. Kiriţescu ( Costin. C. Kiriţescu National Economic Institute), Academia Română (Romanian Academy), Bucureşti. Fournier B., Raveaud P., Le Fur R. (coord.) (2012), État et développement territorial. Nouveaux enjeux, nouvelles pratiques. Guide pour les demarches d économie territoriale, Ministère de l Écologie, du Développement durable, des Transports et du Logement, Direction régionale de l Environnement de L Aménagement et du Logement Rhône-Alpes, Gouv. 22