The Lisbon Treaty and its consequences for rural development and sustainable tourism : A case study of Romania

With the entrance into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009, the European Union (EU) has now more tools to deal with a scenario of 27 Member States with specific regional characteristics and different needs in the fields of rural development and sustainable tourism. An important incentive to sign the Lisbon Treaty on 13 December 2007 was the accession to the EU of twelve Central and European countries in recent years. Romania is one of these States. This country has a huge touristic potential and, at the same time, is one of the poorest EU Member State. Against this background, this paper will examine, firstly, the Lisbon Treaty novelties on rural development and sustainable tourism, paying special attention to the new Policy created specifically for tourism; secondly, it will address the EU legislative and policy frameworks in these two fields and the financial instruments that Romania is entitled to and that it could use to promote rural development and tourism; and thirdly, the paper will focus on the Romanian regulation on rural development and sustainable tourism in order to critically assess the extent to which rural development and tourism have been linked at a domestic level. The final goal of the paper is to assess whether Romania is provided with the necessary legal tools to take a strategic decision about how to develop its rural areas through, amongst other factors, tourism

Mid-term Evaluation of NGO Programmes Under EEA Grants 2009-2014

The EEA Financial Mechanism (2009-2014) have committed 160,4 million to support seventeen NGO Programmes in sixteen countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Spain. The overall objective of the EEA Grants NGO Programmes is strengthened civil society development and enhanced contribution to social justice, democracy and sustainable development in each of the beneficiary countries. As of 30 of June 2014, 957 projects in total of 53,793,561 have been supported mainly in the fields of democracy, citizen participation, human rights, social justice and empowerment, sustainable development and provision of basic welfare services. The mid-term evaluation of the NGO Programmes funded by the EEA Financial Mechanism (2009- 2014) is an independent formative evaluation. Its objective was two-fold: 1) to assess the progress and needs for improvement of the current Programmes, and 2) to inform policies for the next financial period. The main purpose of this evaluation was to provide an expert independent mid-term assessment of the contribution of the EEA Grants 2009-2014 to the NGO sectors in the beneficiary states operating NGO Programmes. The evaluation was of dual nature: (1) of a formative evaluation to identify progress and needs for improvement of the current Programmes and (2) of a forward oriented strategic review to inform policies for the next financial period

Women, WASH, and the Water for Life Decade

From childbirth to education to domestic responsibilities to dignity and safety, access to water and sanitation affect women and girls more than men and boys. This report details recommendations for policy and global practice that will empower women and water-related projects

ASPECTS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY IN ROMANIA. EXPORTS INCREASE AND DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT AT LOCAL AND REGIONAL LEVEL

The amelioration of the local government efficiency in Romania as prerequisite of economy’s sustainable growth largely depends on increasing exports and improving the business environment at regional and local level, factors that can help reducing the development gap. For Romania, several policies and instruments to improve local governance are proposed, firstly by increasing the absorption capacity of structural funds, which could lead to develop business and exports, implicitly to alleviate regional disparities. Nevertheless, on short and medium term, given the under-size of funds (both from the EU and national sources) major changes in improving the local government efficiency are not foreseeable and, under the circumstances of international imbalances (turbulences on financial markets, uncertainties in crude oil prices), which could adversely affect the Romanian economy, attaining the objective of reducing development disparities may be jeopardized in the long run.regional development, local government, foreign trade, foreign direct investment, central and local budget

REGIONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The article intends to present the achievements of a research Romanian project Knowledge management architecture in environmental, social and economic areas,designed to support the sustainable regional development strategy . The main goal of theproject is to improve the regional knowledge management, using a virtual framework for thedesign of the regional development strategy. The innovation introduced by this approachconsists in the integration of the regional actors’ views, in order to develop a realisticregional development strategy, on a democratic and scientific base. The challenge of thisvision is to create a virtual environment for the regional knowledge management andconsensus building related to the regional strategy development. The scientific base for thedesign of the regional development strategy is represented by an improved set of socio-economic indicators and benchmarking tools.regional sustainable development set of sustainable development indicators, embeddedknowledge, e-democracy, e-Government

THE PERCEPTION AND ROLE OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

The article is focused on the analyses of the issues that the global society faces – hunger, unemployment, ethnic minority inclusion, improvement of labor conditions, the need for highly skilled labor force, illiteracy, drugs and alcohol abuse, crime or poverty, etc. – and which require considerable attention, responsible actions and more concern and involvement from the main economic players on international, regional and national levels. That means the business sector might be the missing link in this challenging puzzle. A series of concepts such as: corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate community involvement, promotes and stimulates the contribution of the business sector at the community level in order to solve problems and improve the life of the community. Corporate social responsibility is to be seen as an important feature of the new economy and needs a special attention in order to be efficiently developed and applied in Central and Eastern Europe by private companies, often multinationals that are expanding their operations in order to be consistent with their own best strategic interests.corporate social responsibility, Central and Eastern Europe, social issues

KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY AND TRANSITION ECONOMIES.THE BULGARIAN CHALLENGE

This paper evaluates the Bulgarian positioning in the European knowledge-based economy. The analysis is mainly based on the Knowledge Assessment Methodology of the World Bank (2005). After an analytical framework, the analysis reveals an alarming situation for Bulgaria resulting from several negative factors, which reinforce one another in a cumulative process. Finally, the conclusion underlines that a necessary condition for the Bulgarian economy to become knowledge-based, is to set up good rules of governance but also to be able to mobilize human capital and to coordinate the interactions within citizens and organizations.knowledge economy, knowledge triangle, Central and East European countries

Design Challenges for Innovation Management on Agro-Food Sector

Current status of research indicates that we assist to location-specific factor supremacy as determinants in regional attractiveness and sustainability being territorial driven, we offer strong arguments for policy makers in order to enable this long term strategy. We also address another issue heavily disputed between academics-that is the return to local and regional offerings as complementary to global assumption. Assisting today to a hybrid innovation process, relying upon territorial marketing-an umbrella for too many issues cvasi- exploited: eco-clusters, local and regional offerings; traditional products/services exploiting, regional clusters competing for funds; we are focusing on complex industrial -rural system reconfiguration relying upon dynamic evolution of territorial branding into competitive identity, as the disruptive behavior we need in sustainable development. Successful development strategies are based on the ability to build an institutional territorial coherence-social and environmental sustainability being inextricably interdependent, such a complex coordination structure relies on territorial knowledge sharing through expertise polls consultation- as key concept of good governance. This model of innovational resource allocation coordination on agro food chains, relying upon clusterisation through patterns of innovational management deficit, offers a relevant solution for synergic orientation of assistance and mentoring efforts on the sector, enable the capitalization of relevant capabilities and increase the addressability from innovation demand side. Based upon auditing 500 SME’s from agro food sector in Europe and 51 in SE region, the paper is fully documented on there years of data analyzing from Agro Food sector on 10 European countries in the framework on FP6 SPAS European Project.territorial knowledge sharing, innovation resource allocation, disruptive territorial solution, community supported agro food chains

Social Justice in the EU – Index Report 2016 Social Inclusion Monitor Europe

1. Social justice in the EU – participation opportunities have improved in the majority of EU member states, but are still a long way behind precrisis levels Social justice has improved slightly in the majority of EU member states compared with last year’s Social Justice Index (SJI 2015). It appears that, after years of decline, the majority of countries reached their lowest point between 2012 and 2014. Whether the improvement is a genuine, stable turnaround or just a slight temporary easing will only become apparent in future reports. At least the downward trend observed since 2008 in terms of equal participation opportunities has halted in the majority of member states. However, even seven years after the global economic crisis first hit, participation opportunities in the vast majority of EU states – with a few exceptions – are still noticeably worse than before the crisis. Only five of the 28 EU countries – the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, the UK, and Poland – are showing moderate improvements in terms of participation opportunities, compared with the situation before the economic and financial crisis