REGIONAL ECONOMIC SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN EU: TRENDS AND SELECTED ISSUES

The intensification of globalization and the manifestation of knowledge society brings to the forefront increasingly the role of regions in the economic development, which are considered the active and causal elements of economic development. For the achievement of the desideratum of regional sustainable development, regions are trying to identify the optimum strategies from both sectors perspective, respectively public and private, them operating in interdependence and interrelation relationship for a "healthy" economy in a society. The research paper will try to emphasize the main trends and issue that defines the phenomenon of regional sustainable economic development in practice from the direction of the public sector, using the background offered by literature and the analysis of official statiscal data for empirical evidences. We estimate the analysis to offer us a new viewpoint on regional economic sustainable development with positive aspects, but also deficiencies that require solutions and policy options positioning regional strategies as an engine of development of the whole nation. Thus, we consider that the paper can be a useful viewpoint which allows researchers to include other sources of information for researching an in a much more complex approach.