The impact of economic and financial crisis on the regional disparities in Romania and European Union

The reduction of economic disparities represents one of the priorities of the European Union. This is the reason why we aim to study the evolution of disparities both at national level among the economic development regions of Romania and at the level of the European Union, by taking into consideration all the member countries. In order to study the disparities among the economic development regions of Romania, we took into account the following variables: the available income of private households, the rate of occupied population, the human resources in sciences and technology (as a percentage of the occupied population), the life expectancy at birth, the gross domestic product and the unemployment rate. For the study we used the method of multivariate data analysis, the analysis of main components by taking into consideration the variables used and recorded at the end of the year 2006, in the moment of Romania's adherence to the European Union and at the end of the year 2009. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.