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International trade has fundamentally changed the world we live in, over the past century, under the influence of both geo-political factors and unprecedented technological developments in transport, information and communications. Starting from this assertion, the present paper attempted to capture the essential characteristics of Romania's trade, from the Great Union, in 1918, to the integration into European Union, analyzing the historical stages, defined by the political, economic or social events that happened during these one hundred years. The first period under analyze is the interwar period, 1919-1938. The destructions that were brought by the World War I were strongly felt at the beginning of this period, so all efforts were focused on the restoration and consolidation of the economic development of the country. The gradual recovery of agricultural and industrial production has given a moderate economic development in the 1924-1928 years, abruptly disrupted by the great economic depression, a strong global crisis which affected most countries of the world, in the period 1929-1933. The Romanian economy resumed its development in 1934, especially under the influence of the revival of national industry, strongly supported by state reforms and trade policy, until 1938, when economic growth per capita reached the highest level that has ever been recorded until then. The outburst of the World War II in 1939 has stopped the economic upturn of Romania, both industry and agriculture being affected by the lack of imported raw materials and available labor force. The post-war period also contains several milestones, of which the most important, from our analysis point of view, are the consolidation of communist power (1945-1964) and the socialist period (1965-1989). After 1990, Romania's economy evolved under the impact of some factors as: the trade liberalization, the transition to the market economy and the steps taken towards obtaining the status of EU member state (in effect since 1st of January 2007). Currently, Romania is in the post-accession stage and on the way to its integration into the EU, trying, through economic and social policies, to provide the premises for healthy economic growth, development and modernization, in order to reduce the existing gaps as against the more developed EU Member States.

The paper aims to contribute to increasing the level of knowledge about climate change and its impact on cities in western Romania. The existing legislative framework at European and national level on resilience and adaptation to climate change is presented. The necessary climatic information is identified in order to create a scenario regarding the thermal stress and the health risk of the inhabitants of Timişoara. The results are extrapolated to other cities in the west of the country. The data obtained from the use of climate models are processed in order to use them to establish the necessary adaptation measures in order to reduce the risk to the health of the population due to future thermal stress. The paper presents uncertainties and limitations, as well as conclusions and personal contributions.

This paper is dealing with the problems concerning the improvement of regional classifications by using a composite index of economic development which encompasses four individual indicators: GDP/capita, labour productivity, FDIs and life expectancy. Our aim is to offer a better methodology and a multi-sided image on the regional development, from the perspective of two major factors of influence: Romania’s accession to EU and the recent economic crisis. A special attention should be paid to the hierarchical position of each influence factor. Depending on the specific factor mix, we try to draw conclusions regarding the relationship between economic resilience and vulnerability of each regional economy. The new approach based on the composite index’s computation has the advantage of providing a unique answer on problems such as unclear hierarchies or even contradictory results emerging from different classifications that use separate indicators. The study is covering the 2001-2012 period, divided into two sub-periods: 2001-2006 (pre-accession) and 2007-2012 (post-accession).

The Structural and Cohesion Funds (SCF) represent the most important financial instruments for sustaining the EU Cohesion Policy aimed at achievement the convergence objective by reducing the disparities between Member States i.e. of development gaps, including at the regions level. The financial execution of EU allocations for the programming period 2007-2013 showed a SCF absorption rate of only 27% in the case of Romania, the lowest level among CEE countries. The analysis of this last one position has highlighted causes related to the system of European funds management and accessing, common or specific to different stages and levels, but also a series of outside factors, mainly the legislative barriers and the global crisis persistent effects. Even Romania stands for a net beneficiary position relative to the EU budget, the macroeconomic impact of SCF has proved itself below Romania’s expectations. The amount of 5.1 billion EUR of SCF reimbursed to Romania cumulated during the period 2007-2013 represented only 2% of the GFCF and 0.5% of the GDP. The main macroeconomic indicators in terms of employment, exports, foreign investments, external debt and public debt have deteriorated over the period. As concerns the exercise 2014-2020, the lessons learned from the previous programming period, along with addressing Romania’s economic vulnerabilities and under favorable circumstances of the international context, a significant improvement of SCF absorption rate is expected, increasing also their macroeconomic impact.

This survey analyses aspects of the relationship between FDI and sustainable development within the Romanian economy, focusing in particular on volume, dynamics and structure of FDI companies in Romania, impact on imports and exports as well as ratio between repatriated profit and profit reinvested in the host country. A series of proposals have been made for increasing the contribution of FDI in the sustainable development of Romania by attracting FDI in particular to the tradable sector and for increasing the favourable propagation effects to Romanian companies.

The notion of a country's external debt, measured by a complex system of static and dynamic indicators, knows a lot of approaches and opinions in the literature, more or less convergent, complementary and advanced in terms of factors. Indicators of the external public and private debt on short, medium and long term provide a snapshot of indebtedness of the country and are the most researched domain in the literature, including national and international financial bodies, which adopt a series of classification criteria of countries in terms of size and dynamics of external debt. In this study, we intend to make an analysis of the volume, dynamics and structure of the current Romania's foreign debt, showing the challenges for national economic policies, present and perspective, the internal and external vulnerabilities and ways of approaching the external debt sustainability. According to the definition given by UNCTAD, a sustainable foreign debt is that level of debt which: ? allows the indebted country to pay all current and future debt service without resorting to restructuring or rescheduling; ? prevents accumulation of arrears and defaults; ? in parallel provides an acceptable level of growth in the lending country. Until recently, Romania was considered a country with a low external debt. Currently, the situation has changed, meaning that this debt, somewhat neglected in the early transition period has become a serious threat to present and future sustainability of economic development in Romania. In general, external debt concerns financial and economic interests of all parties especially creditors and debtors, by the formula "win-win", so that, currently, some countries have surplus of balance of payments, usually the most developed and economically healthy, while others have deficits that, in extreme situations, can lead to inability to pay the debt, which means tough measures and policies, especially for the living standards of many generations of taxpayers.

The climate change challenges led to inclusive policy making, in all fields, for each European citizen. European Green Deal represents European Union’s transition process toward a sustainable and inclusive economy. In this context, the paper aims to analyse the transition process of romanian economy to a green economy. In order to achieve this aspiration, the problem should be considered from ecosystems perspective. Roughly 60% from global emissions are generated by urban areas. In the meantime, around 1/3 from energy consumption is re- corded at urban tier. Thus, the direction to rehabilitation and maintenance of urban eco- systems are becoming a priority, because an intense economic activity leads, through indirect activities, to pollution and an irrational usage of natural resources. Environmental protection is still one of the most important issues in order to draw a sustainable society. The article analyses the interdependence among environmental protection and economic activity, in the context of European Green Deal, aiming to offer viable solutions to sustain urban ecosystems. The interrelationship will be analysed from the perspective of an important moment of recent history of Romania, accession to the European Union (2007). Hence, it has been used two moments of reference, year 2006, the last year before Romania’s accession to European Union, and year 2018, the last year with available official data. Thereby, through reporting to these two moments of reference it is possible an assessment of Romanian transition to green economy, according to values and targets of the European Commission, being well-known the public agenda of the European Commission which has as main purpose the efficiency of use of resources. Solutions found from research activity are shown as a statistical radiography of Romania’s economic development model for the period between 2006 and 2018 reporting to European Union’s development model and sustainable consumption, having as main target the importance of urban ecosystems in order to make a sustainable economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to systematize knowledge on anaerobic co-digestion of biomass, having as main substrate organic waste, manure or sludge from treatment plants. The paper contributes to the transfer of knowledge on the recycling of organic waste in biogas plants in a sustainable and circular bioeconomy. It also presents a working procedure that identifies, both theoretically and experimentally, the optimal mixing ratio of biomass in biogas installations for anaerobic co-digestion. The authors' contribution is related to the interpretation of the different experimental tests performed in the laboratory and to the conclusions reached to identify the optimal mixing ratio of biomass for co-digestion in the pilot biogas plant where the experiments were performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current period, marked by the pandemic, in parallel with the unprecedented actions required for the health system, it is necessary to prepare the economy for a crisis. In this regard, the elaboration of a set of measures is seriously affected by the fact that at present it is not known till when the epidemic will last. Firstly, the extraordinarily abrupt dynamics of the infections spread from a day to another, doubled by the authorities' actions for the population isolation at home and, implicit, the severe restriction of the economic activities, make the proposed set of measures frequently changed. The present paper presents an analysis of the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the Romanian economy from the point of view of monetary, fiscal, as well as entrepreneurial policy, tries a macroeconomic estimate on medium term and proposes a series of measures aimed at recovering the national economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce total energy consumption, energy intensity should decrease at a rate higher than the rate of economic growth. This result could be achieved if global energy intensity is reduced or if global economic growth is reduced. The COVID-19 health crisis has a strong impact on global economic growth. The purpose of the article is to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the manifestation of the rebound effect in energy consumption. As aresult, the emergence of the pandemic has negatively affected energy consumption, if we refer to the development of the economy, but it can also be seen as a positive effect when it comes to pollution caused by energy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the aspects related to the efficiency of the Romania's external trade in goods, from the terms of trade perspective. Through the analytical approach, starting from aggregate evolution to the detailed level of products, we attempted to capture the impact of the EU enlargement and the global fi nancial crisis on the efficiency of international trade in Romania during 2006-2016. Structure of external trade and trade balance are factors which influence the terms of trade. Therefore, in our analytical approach we evaluated the efficiency of some product groups, defining efficiency intervals, in correlation with the evolution of theirs shares in export / import, respectively trade balances during the analyzed period. The competitiveness of external trade depends on the level and dynamics of export and import prices, in close connection with embedded product technologies. The use of 3-digit SITC product technology classification is particularly relevant in the context of the topic. A special attention was paid to the territorial distribution, at NUTS3 level, of the products exports with effective impact on Romania's trade efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]