Structural and cohesion funds, a financing alternative for romanian public administration

In conditions of economic stability and, even more so, in conditions of crisis, when the budgetary resources are subjected to additional stress, public administration has an alternative financing source, by means of accessing the structural and cohesion funds made available by the European Union. The paper aims to analyze the manner in which the Romanian public administration has used the amounts available by means of the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, and the Cohesion Fund, in the first half of the programming period 2007-2013. Thus, we propose a comparative analysis of the eight regions of Romania, separately for each fund, analyzing the number of projects submitted, the number of projects won, the amounts of money obtained and the actually used at the regional level. At the same time, the paper offers a comparative analysis of the regions in Romania with similar regions in Hungary and Bulgaria, with respect to the percentage of accession and absorption of community funds, together with a comparison with the EU average. The financing of public administration must come increasingly from sources outside the state budget, such as European funds, but this will not happen until the enhancing of the absorption degree at the regional and national levels.