Administrative Divisions of Romania - Nomenclature of Territorial Units For Statistics (NUTS)

Nomenclature of Territorial Units For Statistics (NUTS)

For statistical and development purposes, Romania, in the NUTS scheme, is divided into:

• NUTS I level: 4 macroregions (macroregiune in Romanian), used for appropriation of European development funds
• NUTS II level: 8 development regions, with an average population of 2.8 million inhabitants per region, although not administrative divisions per se, have been used for decades for statistical purposes by the Romanian National Commission of Statistics (NCS). Recently they also exist to co-ordinate regional development and appropriation of European development funds
• NUTS III level: 41 counties and one municipality (Bucharest, the national capital) reflecting Romania's official administrative-territorial structure
• LAU I level: not used, as territorial units associations have not been identified yet;
• LAU II level: 217 cities and 103 municipalities (for urban areas), and 2,856 communes (for rural areas)

An exception to this structure is the Municipality of Bucharest, which is a secondary division (rather than a tertiary division like other municipalities) and is officially divided into six sectors, each sector having a local government and council.

The eight development regions (specific territorial entities without administrative status or legal personality) represent the framework for collecting specific statistical data, according to the European regulations issued by Eurostat for the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) II territorial level. According to the Emergency Government Ordinance No 75/2001 on the functioning of the National Institute for Statistics, eight Directorates General for regional statistics have been created, and together with the 34 county directorates for statistics, aim at developing regional statistics. Officially, the eight regions are North-East, South-East, South, South-West, West, North-West, Center, and Bucharest. The criteria used by NCS for delimiting the regions is a combination of geographical location and homogeneity based on population density. Alternative historical names are also used, but remain unofficial.