New challenges concerning sustainable local development. Romanian case

The Romanian legal framework for local developments is in an effervescent process of renewal permanently, as a result of ending the communist period and changing the general prospective towards the European Union, based on market economy at the local level. The steps of local development must be sustain by a stabile institutional framework in accordance of demands at European level. Our paper is organized in five parts, where the first part is an analyze of the concept of local development, followed by the actors involved in the process. The third part discuss about legal framework at national and international levels on local development. The fourth part is taking into consideration the financial problems of local authorities and the barriers to be passed in order to obtain the sustainable local development. The research paper is ending with conclusions. So, the paper presents a theoretical approach on local development, pointing out the progress that has been done and also the aspects that still need to be improved at the local level. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.