European Union strategy and foreign direct investments impact on Romania's regional development

This paper analyzes the impact of the European Union's (EU) strategy and the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the reduction of the development disparities between Romanian regions. This paper also customized Romania's evolution as an EU member in the context of the regional development policies implementation, after 2007. Essentially, three problems related to the development level of Romanian regions were analyzed: Gross Domestic Product (GDP)/capita, unemployment rate and FDI. The case study presented is based on the implementation of regional development policies in Romania during the 2000-2013 period and revealed their positive aspects in increasing the GDP per capita with 15 percent (%), in decreasing the unemployment rate in the Northeast region with 8 percent (%), in the creation of 200,000 new jobs through the implementation of some regional development projects and increasing the FDI with more than 500 percent (%) in 2011 compared to 2003. Additionally, the paper presents some developmental gaps between the Romanian regions and analyses their causes. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.