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Chapter 1: Introduction to Romania

Romania is an EU member country in the south-eastern Europe, bordering EU members

Bulgaria and Hungary as well as the Black Sea. Romania joined the EU in January 2007,

together with its neighbour Bulgaria. Its total land surface is 238,391 sq. km, about six times

the size of the Netherlands.

With a population of 1.9m people, the capital Figure 1.1 - Map of Romania

city, Bucharest, is by far the largest city. The

other main cities are Iași, Timișoara, Cluj-

Napoca, Constanța, Craiova and Galati, all

have a population of over 300,00. The country

is divided administratively into 41 districts

(judete) and the city of Bucharest. The district

is the main regional governmental unit.

Romania was a communist country between
1947 and 1989. The communist regime was

overthrown during the 1989 revolution, which

was a watershed event and the most

important event in recent history. After the
fall of the communist regime, Romania moved

rather chaotically towards a free market

economy and democracy. The next important

event was the EU accession in 2007.

Today Romania is a presidential democracy. Source: CIA, The World Factbook

1.1 Economy
Romania is one of the fastest growing countries in the EU and the surrounding region.

Economic growth has developed rapidly, especially in the last four years. In 2017, growth

reached a high of 6.9%, just behind EU leader Ireland. Currently, Romanian growth is more

than double that of the Netherlands (3.2%) and the EU average of 2.4% in 2017. At the same

time, inflation has gone down from over 6% in 2010 to 1.1% in 2017. However, the IMF

projects an inflation rate of 4.7% in 2018.

Table 1.1 - Main economic indicators
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Economic growth -2.8 2.0 1.2 3.5 3.1 4.0 4.8 6.9 5.1 (p)

rate (real GDP)

Inflation rate (CPI) 6.1 5.8 3.4 3.2 1.4 -0.4 -1.1 1.1 4.7 (p)

Source: Eurostat, 2018 projections from IMF, (p=preliminary)

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