Abstract:

The study aims to measure the economic and social cohesion progress in NUTS II regions in Romania and Bulgaria through a comparative analysis. Thus, we opted for the Pena distance method and the variables were grouped according to the Europe 2020 Strategy objectives. The two countries were selected because they share a similar history when it comes to their economic and political regimes before 1989, the transition process to a market economy and the efforts to join the EU in 2007.