Urban and Regional Competitiveness in the North-West Region of Romania

We are living now a period of transformation at EU level, in which Member States will have to constantly negotiate their position and future. Until now, in the European discourse we could hear, and we became accustomed to this approach, of competition between cities, regions and Member States. But now, the paradigm is different: all these entities will have to collaborate on specific projects, at national, regional and local level. The present article analyzes the newest aproaches to urban and regional competitiveness in the light of the latest EU released documents and reports, and, after presenting some EU examples of urban competitiveness, it focuses on a particular case, the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca, aiming to identify the potential for developing its urban competitiveness.