Single country profile
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Romania|
Content: |
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Basic information
| Year of approval of the SD strategy and updates |
The renewed National Sustainable Development Strategy of Romania was approved by the Government and officially launched on 16 December 2008, including a presentation at the European Commission. The review process of the current NSDS was a common project of the Romanian Government, through the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MESD), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Romania. The reviewing process ensured a broad dialog between different stakeholders, and included national authorities, public bodies, universities, the business community and civil society. The renewed NSDS takes into account the objectives of the EU SDS. |
| Type of SD strategy | NSDS covers all three dimensions of SD. |
| Lead ministry/institution in the SD strategy process |
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| Link to the SD strategy document |
National Sustainable Development Strategy - 'Romania 2013-2020-2030' (2008) The full list(s) of NSDS objectives as identified by a study commissioned by Eurostat can be downloaded here: |
| Further information about the SD strategy process |
Mechanisms of Vertical Integration
National — sub-national linkages
An LA 21 project was launched by UNDP. Its aim was to translate the strategic goals and objectives of the NSDS down to the local level by encouraging communities to create their own Local Sustainable Development Strategies.
EU linkages
The renewed EU Strategy for Sustainable Development (EU SDS) that was adopted in June 2006 foresees that Member States bi-annually report about how they address the priorities of the EU SDS. Romania has published its first national report on implementing the EU SDS in summer 2007.
Mechanisms of Horizontal Integration
The National Centre for Sustainable Development (NCSD) was established in 1997. The NCSD is an independent organization, but is recognized by the Romanian Government as the main institution regarding SD competencies in the country. Its mandate is to identify the SD priorities of Romania and to address them at both national and local levels. NCSD promotes human resource capacity-building and facilitates intra- and inter-sectoral integration of national SD debates.
In 2006, the ‘Inter-ministerial Commission for the elaboration of the SD Strategy’ was established and involves representatives of all ministries. Following the recent restructuring of the Government (April 2007) the task of coordinating this process has been transferred from the Ministry of European Integration to the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Management (MMDD). Moreover, the General Directorate for Sustainable Development (GDSD) has been recently created with the responsibility to coordinate the activity of other ministries in relation to the revision of the NSDS.
Evaluation and Review
In September 2006, the process for revising the current NSDS was launched. It is planned to complete the revision process by the end of 2008. The revised NSDS will cover the 2009-2013 period. This will allow to harmonize the provisions of the NSDS with the provisions of other strategic documents (e.g. National Development Plan, Strategic Operations Programme) which are created for the period 2007-2013. The subsequent revised strategies and action plans will have the same time tables as the EU programming periods to guarantee a parallel monitoring of progress, also with the new National Development Plan and Strategic Operational Programs.
Indicators and Monitoring
In 1998, the concept of SD was quite new in Romania. Thus, the Romanian NSDS was mainly aimed to introduce SD rather than specifying detailed objectives, actions and indicators. As a consequence, the NSDS only specifies some 13 preliminary indicators. Today, the set of SDIs is still valid, but work to expand the current set of indicators is ongoing. The aim is to bring the SD indicators in line with the indicators developed by Eurostat.
The full list(s) of indicators as identified by a study commissioned by Eurostat can be downloaded here:
Participation
The creation of the NSDS was not regarded as an end in itself. To not only foster top-down NSDS processes, LA 21 projects were initiated with the support of UNDP. Currently, approximately 33 communities have completed or are in the process of completing Local SD Strategies.
The NSDS points out that in order to implement the objectives, policies and mechanisms initiated by the Government in the "Agenda 21", the involvement of all social groups is necessary. Women, young people and NGOs are specifically mentioned in a sub-chapter and their contribution to SD is highlighted.
Sub-national activities
[No information available]
This Country Profile has been last updated on: Monday, 22 December 2008
For the sources used in the country profiles, please click here.
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