A PROPOSAL FOR ROMANIA'S ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION BASED ON FUNCTIONAL RELATIONS IN THE TERRITORY.

• Author: Sageata, Radu

1. Introduction

   Regional development over the last twenty years has been focusing the interest of scientific research, becoming a major topic of discussion for the central and local authorities, for entrepreneurs and public opinion alike. The reason for assessing the economic and social disparities of regional development is twofold. In the first place, the official documents elaborated in Romania after 1990 show that inter- and intra-regional gaps have widened because, despite all the policies trying to equalize development opportunities, regional polarization is still powerful. In the second place, traditional regional disparities across the Romanian territory continued to exist in the second half of the 20th century despite declared efforts to attenuate them (Antonescu, 2003). The steep economic decline of the 1990s was amply reflected also in the political-administrative decisions which shifted from the ideological perspective to a dominantly economic one. A first step in this direction had in view the principle of restitutio in integrum which characterized most political decisions in matters of legislation up to the mid-1990s, when a number of laws were passed regulating the situation of nationalized houses, rehabilitating some political personalities of the inter-war period, stipulating the objective presentation of Romania's contemporary history and of the communist system, in an attempt to correct the arbitrary decisions made by the regime abolished in 1989. In line with this rehabilitation policy, they decided to re-establish the administrative-territorial structures dismantled in 1950 (Sageata and Simileanu, 2007).

   Romania's official request for EU membership lodged on June 22, 1995 opened up the road to negotiations for assuming the European Community Aquis. As regards the administrative-territorial structures, that moment marked the development of initiatives to set up territorial units comparable in area and demographic size to regions in Europe. The idea of integrating former administrative structures gained ground against proposals of fragmentation based on the former county pattern. As a result, the eight development regions emerged in 1996 constituted the territorial framework for the implementation of development policies. They were mentioned in the Green Paper. Regional--Development Policy in Romania, elaborated by the Government and the European Commission, the 1997 PHARE Program and sanctioned by Law no. 151/1998 on Regional Development in Romania (Benedek, 2004; Bakk and Benedek, 2010).

   Now and then, the regional development policy catches public attention and fundamental questions are being raised concerning the legitimacy, representativeness and functionality of these regions. Those contesting these attributes are reminded of the necessity to have a regional framework capable to meet also EU requirements. Supported or criticized, regional development still poses many questions that need to be answered, moreover so, as the process of integration will turn the Continent into a 'Europe of regions' (Labasse, 1991).

   The poor absorption of European funds at local level has re-opened the polemic about the viability of existing counties. Within the current territorial pattern, counties are not large enough to allow small, local projects to become part of comprehensive regional strategic projects. Besides, a more efficient absorption of European funds devoted to local development projects requires the substantive reduction of costs and of public administrative bureaucracy, a better correlation between public decision-making, the specific needs and problems of local communities and their particular development opportunities distinctively different for each of them (www.advocacy.ro). Attaining these goals implies forming regional territorial structures (NUTS 2) by amassing existing counties or new ones, the viability of which depends on creating administrative regions matching territorial functional relations and fluxes among the regional settlement system.

   Proceeding from the European and Romanian experience in the political-administrative regionalization of the territory, the work suggests an administrative-territorial outline of Romania based on the functional relations between settlements and the distance between polarization cores and subordinated settlements. The main administrative-territorial regionalization models of EU-member states according to their particularities, as well as the main post-1989 directions and trends of manifestation within this area have been considered. In view of it, the author advances an alternative solution for Romania's administrative-territorial regionalization, relying on the functional relations set at the level of the human settlement system.

2. European experiences

   Regions in the EU vary widely in terms of origin and structure. The great territorial and demographic disparities between regions in the EU Member States, as well as between those within individual states are the outcome of the specific way in which each of them was formed and evolved in the course of history. In view of this reality, some unitary principles of regional development policies were being elaborated for the entire space of the European Economic Community (EEC) as early as 1972; in 1975, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was created with the aim of implementing regional development and eliminating territorial unbalances (Antonescu, 2011). A unitary basis for analysis of all the economic and social phenomena throughout the EEC space was developed as late as 1988, when the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) issued the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS). Initially, it contained three hierarchical levels (NUTS I--macro-regional, equivalent to federal; NUTS II--regional, and NUTS III--department or county level) distinguished by certain demographic thresholds (Table 1). This working tool facilitated the correspondence between regional levels in the EU states, on the one hand, and between them and the administrative structures of national states, on the other (Alexandru, Ivanoff and Gilia, 2007).

   This standardization has led to distinguishing two categories of regions:

   --Administrative or political-administrative regions with a deeply-rooted regional identity built over some long periods of time, that also have a unitary cultural, ethnical and linguistic background (the Lands in Germany, the regions and departments in France, the regions and provinces in Italy and Belgium, the autonomous communities in Spain, etc.);

   --Statistical-territorial regions, kind of artificial make-up, devoid of any regional personality or historical antecedents, the outcome of the aggregation of existing lower-rank territorial-administrative units (ZEAT in France, regieungsbezirk in Germany, landsdelen in The Netherlands, standard regions and groupings of comitats in the United Kingdom, amter groupings in Denmark, groupings of development regions in Greece, groupings of autonomous communities in Spain, or development regions in Romania) (Sageata, 2008a).

   Later on, this hierarchization was supplemented with other two statistical-territorial levels: NUTS IV, based on inter-commune structures, and NUTS V, based on the commune. At present, the Romanian regional system has the following statistical-territorial levels: NUTS II (sanctioned by Law no. 151/1998, comprises 8 development regions without administrative and juristic person status, average population number / region 2.8 million inhabitants); NUTS III (41 counties and Bucharest Municipium, represents Romania's administrative-territorial structure) and NUTS V (320 towns, among which 103 municipia (except Bucharest) and 2,859 communes with 13,285 villages (on January 1st, 2013).

   The Romanian regional structures, patterned on the British model of inter-communal association, are marked by higher inter-regional disparities than the intra-regional ones, a situation that restricts the degree of territorial cohesion and implicitly of functionality. Therefore, in the author's opinion, a regional outline based on historical regions, which in time have developed individual traits according to traditions, urban polarization areas, complementary social-economic particularities and a homogeneous cultural and spiritual heritage, would be the solution (Sageata, 2004a).

   The functional attributes of these regions are embedded in the inhabitants' psyche, the region becoming actually a mental space, a space of reference for the locals, of communion between man and his life environment, a fundamental element for any space structure to be sustainable. Mental spaces are also functional spaces, as well as homogeneous ethnical and cultural spaces, structured from bottom to top according to the relationships established among the local communities (Cocean, 1997, 2002). Most regions in Europe are largely mental spaces, shaped by a long-lasting historical process (Duby, 1995). There are cases when the locals' regional identity is stronger than their national identity (Flanders and Wollonia in Belgium, the Lander in Germany and Austria, the regions in Italy and France, or the autonomous communities in Spain). Therefore, we would say that the regions which have become mental spaces are also the most viable ones for getting administrative status. Romania's territory has three types of mental spaces corresponding to three distinct spatial levels: macro-territory --the historical provinces; middle territory--the historical lands (the former small rural district seats, e.g., the Land of Vrancea--Tara Vrancei), and micro-territory (communes) (Cocean and Cianga, 1999-2000).

3. An administrative-territorial history of regions in Romania

   The territorial evolution of Romania has been very much influenced by the country's geographical position at the cross-roads of Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. In view of it, the geopolitical context of the...