Romania - general data

The Romanian State

Nation: Romania

Capital city: Bucharest

Geographic position: in the south-east of Central Europe. Neighbours: Ukraine (N), the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, and the Black Sea (E), Bulgaria (S), Serbia (SW), and Hungary (W).

Population: ca. 21,700,000. Outside the country's borders there are large Romanian communities.

Official language: Romanian (a neo-Latin language of the Romance languages family)

Ethnic structure: Romanians – 89.5%; Hungarians (including Szecklers) – 6.5%; other ethnic groups – 4%

Religion: Eastern Orthodox - 86.7%; Roman-Catholic - 4.7%; Protestant - 3.2%, etc.

Administrative organization: 41 counties, plus Bucharest, the capital city (population ca. 2,200,000). There are 263 cities and towns, of which 80 municipalities, and 2 685 communes with over 13 285 villages.

Climate: temperate-continental, four seasons

Features: mountains (31% of area), hills and plateaus (33%), plains (36%), Danube Delta

Romania is a sovereign and independent, unitary and indivisible nation state;

Form of government: republic;

Romania is a democratic and social state ruled by the law;

The state is organized according to the principle of separation and balance of the powers – the Legislative, the Executive and the Judiciary – in the framework of constitutional democracy, guaranteed by political pluralism.

The President of Romania represents the Romanian state and guarantees the national independence, unity and territorial integrity of the country (5-year term). Since December 2004 Traian Băsescu has been President of Romania (re-elected on Dec. 6, 2009 for a new term of office).

The Legislative: The Parliament of Romania (4-year term) has two houses: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

The Executive: The Government of Romania, headed by the Prime Minister, entrusted by the President of Romania with forming the Cabinet and with the Governance Program endorsed by Parliament by a vote of confidence.

The Judiciary: independence guaranteed by the Superior Council of the Magistracy; judges are irremovable.

The national symbols

The Flag  of Romania

The National Coat of Arms 

State heraldic symbols existed as far back as the dawn of the Middle Ages, gradually evolving towards a representative, synthetic coat of arms.

After the 1989 Revolution, Romania needed a representative coat of arms. It has as a central element the golden eagle with cross, which stands for the founding Basarab dynasty, the core around which was formed Wallachia, one of the three Romanian provinces of the Middle Ages (Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania). The shield on which it is placed is azure, symbolizing the sky. The eagle holds in its talons the insignia of sovereignty: a scepter and a saber that remind of two major rulers: Moldavia’s Stephen the Great and Saint, and Wallachia’s Michael the Brave, the first unifier of the Romanian provinces. A quartered escutcheon features the symbols of the Romanian historical provinces, as well as two dolphins. The first quarter shows Wallachia's coat of arms on azure: a golden eagle. The second – Moldavia's traditional coat of arms: a black auroch with a star between its horns. The third quarter features the coat of arms of Banat and Oltenia, a golden bridge with two arched openings (symbolizing Roman emperor Trajan's bridge over the Danube) and a golden lion. The fourth quarter holds the coat of arms of Transylvania: in the upper part, an eagle with golden talons; on the base, there are seven crenellated towers, symbolizing the main towns in Transylvania. Also represented are the lands adjacent to the Black Sea (the historical province of Dobruja): two face-to-face dolphins.

The flag of Romania is a tricolor: red, yellow and blue. It has not undergone major changes in the course of history. Only the distribution of the colors (proportion and position) changed to a certain extent, being made equal after the Revolution of 1848 when, influenced by the French revolutionary spirit, many states in Europe adopted the standardized three-color banner as their national flag.

The flag of Romania has the colors placed vertically as follows: blue (hoist), yellow (in the middle) and red (fly). The blue is cobalt, the yellow – chrome, and the red – vermillion.

Geography of Romania

Romania is located in the geographic centre of Europe. It neighbours to the North on Ukraine, to the East on the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, and the Black Sea, to the South on Bulgaria, to the South-West on Serbia, and to the West on Hungary.

It stretches over 238,391 sq km, which ranks it 12th in Europe.

The administrative organization of Romania features 41 counties, and Bucharest, thecapital city. In the counties, the basic administrative units are the towns and communes (made of several villages). 

There are 263 cities and towns, of which 80 municipalities, and 2 685 communes with over 13 285 villages.

History

Culture, art and spirituality

Material finds attest to man’s existence on present-day Romania’s territory as far back as 2 million years. The originality of the cultural areas, related to the other European pre-historical cultures, can be seen in the art of pottery (painted earthenware, clay statuettes such as the famous “Thinker” of Hamangia-Cernavoda). The Tartaria clay tables (incised pictographic motifs) testify to an early archaic writing – among the first in Europe – around 4000 B.C., contemporary with the Sumerian writing.

State organization, attested to in writing, goes back to the early 10th century, when feudal bodies politic preceding the big Romanian feudal states are documented.

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The political regime in Romania was replaced in 1940 with a dictatorship, initially fascist and then military, and the country entered the war against the USSR (June 1941), on Germany’s side. The Romanian armies fought on the Eastern Front until the summer of 1944 and then, following the coup of August 23, they joined the Allies and fought on theWestern Front, helping to the liberate Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria. The Paris Peace Treaty (1947) brought northern Transylvania back within the boundaries of Romania. Moreover, Romania was maintained in the Soviet sphere of influence, and the communist regime was forced upon it.  There followed the Sovietization of the countryand repression of those who represented true democracy. The danger of seeing Romania turned into a source of raw materials and even dismembered  made the communist leadership of Romania  try to put an end to the Soviet hegemony.

Meanwhile, Nicolae Ceauşescu’s and his wife’s personality cult and the communist dictatorship regime led to a severe political and economic crisis. Several social revolts were recorded. Between 17-20 December 1989, big anticommunist rallies took place inTimişoara and on 21 December 1989, powerful unrest shook Bucharest. Hundreds of thousands of Bucharesters flooded the streets, occupied the main official buildings  and chased the dictator.

The communist structures were dismantled, the foundations of a democratic society were laid, and the switch was made to the market economy. In a relatively short period, the historical political parties (the National Peasant Party, the National Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party) were revived, new parties were created and free elections were held. A new Constitution of Romania was passed and then amended, based on the standards of Western democracies.

Romania is a member of NATO (since 2004) and of the European Union (since January 1, 2007).

Fine Arts. The scope and brilliancy of the interior and especially exterior frescoes decorating the monasteries of Northern Moldavia (15th-16th c.) – Voronet, Moldovita, Sucevita, Arbore, Humor, or Patrauti made the great Byzantinologist André Grabar consider this phenomenon “an illustrated book open on all its pages”.

Preserving the ties with the Byzantine stock and with folklore, the culture of the Romanian Modern Age was increasingly connected to the European artistic world which, in turn, sent back echoes of the Renaissance, Romanticist, Academist, or Expressionist trends. Nicolae Grigorescu and Ion Andreescu, together with Stefan Luchian, are the founders of modern Romanian painting.

Modern Romanian  and world sculpture was marked by Constantin Brancusi, the artist who initiated the restructuring of the world’s 20th-century sculptural idiom.

Theater

Drama. The beginnings of the drama shows are traced back to the primitive forms of autochthonous folk theater, and to the shows staged at the courts of the ruling princes or of the big landowners. In 1817 the Theatre of Oravita opened, the first in the Romanian language, in 1818 the Theatre of Arad  and in 1819 Euripides’s Hecuba was performed at the CismeauaRosie Theater in Bucharest.

Playwright Ion Luca Caragiale’s work is the cornerstone of original Romanian drama.

Music

Archeological sources document a clear musical culture in pre-Roman and Roman Dacia. In the Middle Ages, Romanian art was an original spiritual reality, Wallachian dance being mentioned in European musical codices.

Romanian classical music became internationally known through the work of a genius –  George Enescu, a reputed composer and violin virtuoso. The George Enescu International Festival  (19 editions  so far), celebrates this brilliant musician, by the presence of prominent contemporary musicians.

Music stages all over the world were graced by worthy Romanian musicians such as – to name but a few – conductor Sergiu Celibidache, pianist Dinu Lipatti, violinist Ion Voicu and other famous instrumentalists or singers, from Haricleea Darclee (the first to perform the leading part in Puccini’s Tosca)  to soprano Angela Gheorghiu.

Filmmaking

The first film screenings took place in Bucharest as early as 1896. After a long evolution, marked by many notable achievements, several recent Romanian films have won kudos at international festivals:. Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (Un Certain Regard prize, Cannes, 2005) and Catalin Mitulescu’s short film “Traffic” (Palme d’Or at Cannes), to name only a few.

Economic profile

With a population of 22 million, Romania is Central Europe’s second largest market. Romania boasts several real advantages:

1. an excellent location at the crossroads of the main trade routes between western Europe and Asia, between South Europe (the Mediterranean) and northern Europe;

2. important river and sea navigation facilities  (Constanta is the biggest port on the Black Sea; proximity to the Danube – Rhine – Main canal connecting the Black Sea to the North Sea);

3. skilled labour, including highly trained specialists in the fields of technology, IT and engineering;

4. plenty of natural resources (oil, gas etc.) and vast fertile croplands;

5. a huge tourism potential;

6. diversified industrial structure;

7. legislation favouring foreign investment, based on free and nondiscriminatory access to the market.

In 1990 Romania undertook an economic reform process that accompanied and complemented rapprochement or, in certain cases, integration in international institutions and organizations – the European Economic Community (which became the European Union / EU) and NATO, but then also the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization / WTO (of which Romania is a founding member) or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The 90s were marked by economic downturn.

The interval 2000-2008 brought a marked economic recovery, with an annual growth rate above 6%, higher over 2003-2008 when Romania posted a sizable rise in consumption and productive investment.

Improvement of the business environment, the effects of the flat taxation rate and foreign partners’ positive attitude towards Romania in the context of accession to NATO and the EU helped attract a record volume of foreign investment.

Foreign trade grew sensibly in point of both quality and quantity. The value of Romania’s trade exchanges has grown significantly, notably in recent years, when annual growth rates higher than 10% have been recorded. 2008 saw a peak in foreign trade which aggregated approx. EUR 90 billion (of which approx. 34 billion in exports). Romania’s main trade partners in the last decade have been Germany, Italy, France, Turkey, Hungary, the Netherlands, the UK, and Austria.

In point of quality, the structure of commercial exchanges has been marked by major changes, Romania exporting more and more value-added products and services, that mirroring the economic restructuring, the capacity of the national economy to supply goods and services and a better utilization of facilities of access to foreign markets. Currently, the EU accounts for over 70% of Romania’s foreign trade, which indicates the level of economic integration in the European single market.

The Government’s efforts to cushion the effects of the crisis were geared at stimulating economic growth, maintaining the capacity to attract investment, and protecting the economic interests of the people, by lowering the number of taxes included.

Romania’s macroeconomic prospects have visibly improved of late, on the backdrop of external demand, even though unemployment-related problems are likely to persist.

The Romanian Government will further work to fulfill the convergence criteria and observe the terms of the Stability and Growth Pact.

Reforms are to be operated at a fast pace, with emphasis on decentralizing the public administration, mobilizing public funds and strengthening the administrative capacity of generating projects to better absorb European funds, and financing priority projects in the areas of infrastructure, agriculture, education, health care, energy, environment, and creating new business opportunities for investors.

Romania’s strategic priorities for the next period are to develop the infrastructure, to ensure energy security  and supply from alternative sources, modernize agriculture, enhance the quality of education and health care services

Turism

The harmonious relief, featuring plains, hills and mountains, makes Romania ideal for tourism.

The Black Sea Coast – one of Europe’s widest seacoasts – features 15 resorts spreading over 50 km, each special in its own way, with fine beaches, hotels and health spas.

In the North of the seacoast lies the Danube Delta, the second largest delta in Europe. Unique on the continent, its beauty, the exquisite landscapes and the rich wildlife made UNESCO declare it a Biosphere Reserve. It is the newest and lowest territory of Romania with a relief permanently under change. The minimum altitude is –36 m on Chilia Arm, and the maximum +13 m on the dunes of the Letea Sand Bank. With an area of 2.590 km2, the Danube Delta includes both dry land and swamps with lakes and streams.

In the Romanian Carpathians, representing an important part of the Alpes-Carpathian-Himalayan chain, mountain resorts offer all it takes for memorable holidays.

The towns of Vatra Dornei and Borsa in the north, Slanicul Moldovei, Borsec and Sovata in the center, Poiana Brasov, Predeal, Sinaia, Busteni, Căciulata and Calimănesti in the center-south zone, Muntele Mic, Semenic and Băile Herculane in the south-west, Stâna de Vale in the north-west are only some of the holiday and health resorts in a widespread tourist network providing high-standard accommodation.

Thermal and mineral water springs in Romania represent the most important source of medicinal waters in Southeastern Europe, Romanian  spa resorts being well known for their beneficial effect in various conditions and diseases.

In NW Moldavia, the area known as Bukovina, is famous for the medieval Orthodox monasteries with interior and especially exterior frescoes (Arbore, Humor, Moldovita, Patrauti, Probota, Suceava, Sucevita, Voronet etc.). These masterpieces of art and architecture  are part of Europe’s artistic heritage and were listed in the UNESCO world heritage. A salient example is the Voronet Monastery,  famous notably for two important features of its painting: the specific hue of blue, “Voronet blue,” and the spectacular Doomsday scene displayed on the entire western wall, uninterrupted by any kind of holes, doors or windows.

The wooden churches from Maramures include eight monuments (Barsana, Budesti-Josani, Desesti, Ieud, Sisesti, Poienile Izei, Targu Lapus etc.), also listed in the UNESCO world heritage in 1999.

In Romania there are over 50 castles and citadels such as those of Rasnov, Bran, Hunedoara, Sinaia, Suceava, Neamt, Alba Iulia, Sighisoara - the most beautiful and complete medieval urban center in Romania, etc.; Dacian fortresses in Orastie Mountains (Blidaru, Capalna, Costesti, Luncani Piatra Rosie, Sarmizegetusa Regia – Grădistea de Munte); and palaces (ex: Cotroceni in Bucharest, Mogosoaia, the Culture Palace in Iasi). All these edifices are charged with a powerful history and culture, constituting an open history book for everybody.

The country’s heritage also comprises the cities with their monuments, museums, fairs and botanical gardens, the natural parks, and a large number of picturesque villages, where rural, ecological tourism has developed significantly, with accommodation in boarding houses nested in the middle of wondrous landscapes, and  traditional cuisine.

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