Abstract:

The interregional development policy in Romania has developed as a key policy in the process of integrating the country into the EU. In the process of setting up the development regions, there were taken into account the existing divisions between their development levels, but also within the regions, between the counties, the towns and the communes. The regional policy initially had the main objective to reduce the existing regional imbalances, stimulate the balanced development, the revitalization of disadvantaged areas, as well as the prevention of the production of new imbalances, the stimulation of the inter-regional co-operation, which contributes to the economic and social progress. Subsequently, during the implementation of the regional development programs and in line with the tendencies of the European regional policy, Romania has proceeded to the realization of a regional policy combining classical elements and new elements of regional policy required by the European Union, consisting in creating the capacity of the regions to be competitive. In this paper we carry out a cluster analysis, using the k-medoids clustering algorithm of the 42 counties, including Bucharest, during 2016. After checking the optimal number of clusters we perform the cluster analysis and conclude that there is a convergence of most of the counties in one cluster. Bucharest appears as an outlier in another cluster.