Competitiveness Dynamics In The Romanian Regions

Regional competitiveness is a topic of major interests among researchers and decision makers of the European Union and of the Member States, lately especially in connection with the economic and social cohesion and subsequent policies. Many attempts were done over years to define it, to identify its key factors and to assess it, with the overall aim of designing and implementing adequate policies to reduce the development gaps of the laggard and less prosperous regions of Europe. Based on the reports on Regional Competitiveness Index, the paper presents the latest evolutions of the overall competitiveness of the Romanian regions and of its key factors. The findings are not hopeful: except for the Bucureşti-Ilfov Region, in the last two rankings of RCI (2013 and 2016), all the regions of Romania were ranked among the last in the European Union, and the Sud-Est Region was ranked penultimate among the EU regions for two periods in a row. Only the most developed regions of the country have slightly improved their ranking between 2013 and 2016: Centru, Bucureşti-Ilfov and Vest, while the others stagnated or worsened their rankings. In the case of competitiveness dimensions, most of the Romanian regions have improved their rankings regarding the efficiency dimension (except for Nord-Est and Sud Muntenia), while regarding the most dynamic component of RCI, namely the innovation dimension, most of the regions either stagnated, or worsened their rankings (Bucureşti-Ilfov substantially), except for two regions that have also improved their overall rankings (Centru and Vest). Such findings call not only for a re-examination of the way the regional policy is implemented in Romania, but also of its inter-connections with other policies enforced at national, regional/county and local levels, in order to create the much necessary synergies for development where they are missing or to unlock the ones that are blocked.