Administrative map of Romania

As of 2003, Romania is divided into 41 counties and one municipality, as follows:

History

The administrative division in "judeţe" was created in the 19th century using the French departments system as an example. The communist party changed it to the Russian model (in raions), but it was soon reverted to the current system in 1968. In 1981 the former counties of Ilfov and Ialomiţa were re-organised into the present-day counties of Giurgiu, Călăraşi, Ialomiţa and Ilfov. Until 1995 Ilfov was not a proper county, instead it was a dependency of Bucharest.

Future

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 NUTS II territorial level. According to 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 Romanian National Commission of Statistics (NCS), the Romanian territory is divided into eight regions, each consisting of six counties (administrative units)3located in the same geographical area and having about the samepopulation density 4. 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, namely 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

See also

• List of Romanian Cities
• Etymological list of counties of Romania