Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 31st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG5: Public Finance and Public Financial Management Author(s) Anca Monica Marin Research Institute for Quality of Life Bucuresti Romania Eugen Glăvan, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Alin Chi?, Independent Expert, Bogdan Corad, Romanian Centre for Economic Modelling Title Alike, but not in the Same League: Rural Municipalities and EU funds in Romania File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Anca Monica Marin Abstract • The objective of the research question(s). This paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis on EU funds absorption at the local level, for all the rural localities of Romania, for the entire programming period of 2014-2020. It is focused on differentiation of levels of EU funds absorption for the rural municipalities in Romania. • Data sources and methodology. The cumulative EU funds for the period of 2014-2020 represent financial data from the local budgets execution, as published by the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration, Directorate for Local Fiscal and Budgetary Policies. The process of data management included merging all the information for all the localities in Romania by assigning correct unique identification codes (SIRSUP, LAU 2 codes) for all municipalities, for all the analyzed years. The category of EU funds from the programming period of 2014-2020 is registered as a distinct category in the local budgets’ execution starting from the year of 2016. The data published by the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration is reported in lei (national currency). The process of data management converted the sums for each year in euro, based on the Euro/ECU exchange rates - annual data. Afterwards, the sums in euro have been converted in euro at constant 2010 prices, based on the price index, implicit deflator. The next step included computing constant euro per inhabitant for each year. The information for population come from the National Institute of Statistics. Therefore, for enabling comparisons, the variable on EU funds absorption is computed as euro at constant prices 2010 per inhabitant, as a sum for all the available years (2016-2021). Factors differentiating absorption capacity are examined in relation to the presence of marginalized communities, level of fiscal capacity, spatial affiliation, development region, level of development, population dynamics, funding available from other sources. Based on data availability, the typology of rural areas proposed by OECD will be discussed in relation to differentiated explanatory factors - (1) rural inside a functional urban area (FUA); (2) rural close to an FUA; (3) rural remote. • Expected findings. The entire paper is useful to showcase the importance of place-based approach analysis. The article adds up to the importance of spatial attributes in relation to the EU funding policy and refines several characteristics for reflecting the strong heterogeneity of rural municipalities in Romania. The study is based on an open database. It provides the grounds for a close examination of a territorial analysis on EU funding policy at the lowest disaggregated level, that of municipality. Both the created dataset and the associated analysis can represent a toolkit for enabling national and local evidence-based policy making process.
