NEW CHALLENGES FOR R&D AND INNOVATION IN ROMANIA

Romania is currently facing many difficulties in order to cope with financial andeconomic crisis as well as to reach the Europe 2020 targets. This paper presents the new challengesfaced by Romanian Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) system during the economicrecession, its weaknesses and barriers that have hindered the implementation of the R&D structuralreforms and delineate some benchmarks for overcoming them. Based on the most recent data andinformation about the Romanian RDI system, it attempted a qualitative analysis of the main aspectsthat may delay or stall its effective integration within European Research Area and may diminishingthe R&D contribution to a quickly economic recovery. Ignoring the challenges confronting theRomanian research and innovation system, neglecting them in the prioritization of public fundsallotment and overlooking effective incentives for increasing the private sector contribution to theRDI funding will keep labeling Romania as ‘modest innovator‘, ranking it among the least in theEU regarding the performance indicators of the field.