Controversies and Challenges along the Access - Absorption Route of the European Structural Funds

According to Copenhagen criteria, any country formulating its option to adhere at the European Union has the obligation to meet a series of requirements: - the consolidation and the stability of the fundamental institutions that guarantee the lawful state and the human rights; - a functional and competitive market economy on the model of the traditional developed economies; - the reform of the administrative structures in order to ensure the country’s compatibility with the status of member state, which involves assuming, accepting and reaching the objectives of the Union from a political, economic and monetary perspective. Therefore, the social and economic convergence and cohesion constitutes the essential working principles of the Union and, at the same time, they contain the quintessence of the operating reason of the structural European funds, equally oriented during the pre- and post-adherence stage, as true and efficient tools of implementation of the regional policies. Co-opted in this continental construction at a moment of real integration effervescence, which took place simultaneously with the expansion of the Union’s space, Romania stated its pro-western option without hesitation and, as a result, it aligned its entire social and economic organism to the European institutional and behavioral biorhythm.