Administrative divisions of Romania

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Subdivisions of Romania Regional level Development regions County level Counties Local level Municipalities Cities Communes Other divisions Villages Sectors

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Romania's administration is relatively centralised and administrative subdivisions are therefore fairly simplified.

• Romania is divided into eight development regions (which are not administrative divisions per se but rather exist to co-ordinate regional development)
• The development regions are divided into 41 counties and one municipality (Bucharest, the national capital)
• The 41 counties are divided into 2686 communes (for rural areas) and 265 cities and municipalities (for urban areas). Municipality status is given to larger cities; municipalities have a more decentralised administration than cities.

Beyond the communal and city or municipal level, there are no further administrative subdivisions. However, communes are divided into villages (villages having no individual administration and hence not being an administrative division). There are 13,092 villages.

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.

In Romania eight development regions (specific territorial entities without administrative status or legal personality) have been created by voluntary association. The development regions 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. The legal acts regarding Romania territorial division define the current territorial structure, similar to NUTS, as follows:

NUTS I level: Romania

NUTS II level: 8 development regions with an average population of 2.8 million inhabitants

NUTS III level: 42 counties, reflecting Romania's administrative-territorial structure

NUTS IV level: not used, as territorial units associations have not been identified yet;

NUTS V level: 265 cities and towns;

2686 communes with 13,092 villages, reflecting the administrative-territorial structure of Romania.

According to the Romanian National Commission of Statistics (NCS), the Romanian territory is divided into eight regions, each consisting of six counties (administrative units) located in the same geographical area and having about the same population density. The eight regions are North-East, South-East, South, South-West, West, North-West, Center, and Bucharest. Bucharest is the only region that includes just one county, Ilfov. The criteria used by NCS for delimiting the regions is a combination of geographical location and homogeneity based on population density.

References: Law 151/1998 regarding the regional development in Romania was published in “Monitorul Oficial” in July 16 1998, being approved by the Romanian Parliament. MIE Chapter 21