Conceptual and Methodological Analisys in the Study of Regional Develompent in EU And, in Particular, in Romania

Considering that political regionalisation should be more than the division of a territory into regions, its main aim being the regional development of a political entity, this paper seeks to provide answers to the following question: what is the most appropriate geographical scale to describe and support regional development in EU and, in particular, in Romania? In order to achieve this, guided by logical analysis and using data from specialised literature and from the studies of different national and European expert bodies, there are analysed the notions of regionalisation and regional development and brought up the issue of the institutional framework of regional policy instruments. These open new insights for future research. The study concludes that while the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is used as a territorial analysis unit, the real local needs cannot be assessed in the same way. In fact, one aspect often overlooked is the importance of social, economic and cultural relations between economic actors, which are proper sources of agglomeration economies that enable a balanced development of the regions.