The recent tendency towards overpopulated cities has created an increased demand for the expansion of borders towards rural areas. This has modified the city–countryside relationship, giving rise to the concept of peri-urbanity. Based on these assumptions, this research paper aims to highlight the role and importance of sustainable development for the sustained progress of peri-urban regions, particularly by looking at international standards proposed by the United Nations. In other words, by encompassing the topics of sustainable and inclusive economic growth, decent work for all, and sustainable tourism, Goal 8 of the 17 Sustainable Goals proposed by United Nations represents a framework for the analysis of a peri-urban region located in Romania which is subject to massive development changes. This is realized by conducting extended qualitative research via the triangulation method, intended to compare and contrast three relevant perspectives: those of locals, those of professionals directly involved in the development of the area, and those presented in publicly available reports and statistics. The obtained results indicate factors such as air quality, water quality, space efficiency, and waste collection as being topics directly related to sustainability, while job availability and touristic development perspectives received lower interest. We stress that, despite the growth of urban areas and the migration of people from urban to peri-urban areas, more attention needs to be directed towards the protection of the environment. This is aimed at maintaining the authenticity of the region, specifically in terms of agricultural lands that can support the surrounding major cities. Our study will be relevant both to scholars and to actors in the domains of sustainability, sustainable economic growth, and tourism.

This paper contributes to the research on entrepreneurship in rural areas by focusing on the absorption and investment plans developed with European Funds and implemented in Romania in 2007-2013 for rural development. Entrepreneurship in the European Union is seen as the solution for creating and increasing jobs number, developing new business models, and is related very often with creativity and innovation. Moreover, entrepreneurship is directly linked to the economic performance of regions (Audretsch, D.B., Keilbach, M., 2005), poverty reduction and contributes to the economic advancement of rural communities. The focus on rural areas is given by the fact that almost half of the Romanian population lives in villages or communes (around 45%), and the main income source comes from agriculture. In the same time, there is an important potential for entrepreneurial projects because rural areas are high underdeveloped, there is a lack of services in major fields as education, social services, entertainment etc. Also, we find a high potential in tourism, especially in ecological, adventure or agro-tourism. We develop a theoretical framework to discuss the potential impact of EU Funds on rural development, the access to public funds for rural population, their readiness for business ownership, the most accessible fields for starting a business and regional variables. Our study is based on public data and official reports on the European Funds received by Romania in the budgetary period of 2007-2013 and other market data that round the entrepreneurship frame in rural areas. We analyze the number of start-ups financed by European funds, type and size of enterprises, number of jobs and reasons for contract cancellation. We find that regions with a reach cultural heritage and closer to the Western border have registered more applications and are more interested in self-employment, but also that given the administrative barriers many entrepreneurs decided to cancel the contracts.

Entrepreneurial initiatives and actions are considered main triggers of economic and social development as well as important factors in order to achieve more cohesion among various countries and regions within the European Union. The main goal of the present paper consists in analyzing the scientific literature on entrepreneurship and its influences on regional development. In the first section of the paper the concepts of entrepreneurship and regional development are broken down from the perspective of various researchers. Next the link between entrepreneurship and regional development is established and it is analyzed how the two terms are interconnected: entrepreneurship might have a positive contribution to the development of a region and in the same time some regions are more attractive for entrepreneurs than others. In the last section of the paper a bibliometric analysis is conducted, which aims at establishing the interest existing in the scientific literature for this research topic based on different criteria such as: number of publications, language of publication, journals where articles have been published, areas of knowledge in which authors have published research on entrepreneurship and regional development etc. The analysis was conducted based on scientific literature published between 2001 and 2017 and indexed in the Web of Science - Core Collection. It is highlighted that most of the publications on entrepreneurship and regional development are articles, published in English in the field of Business economics. Overall, the positive trend regarding the number of publications on this topic reveals a growing interest for this research area.

Sustainable entrepreneurship is a new business driven concept with the aim to increase both social and business value. The three pillars of sustainable entrepreneurship are people, profit and planet. The question that comes frequently in discussion is how businesses can mix these three and bring human beings in a balance with the nature by keeping the profit goal. Sports industry registered a huge increase in the last twenty years, including Romania, especially on the side of amateur sports people, usually employees who are seeing sports activity as a way of reaching the life-work balance and a way of destressing after a hard working day. Sports entrepreneurs observed very quickly the opportunity of this form of spending free time, especially through activities done outside in the nature and started to organize diverse events like mountain marathons, cross biking, duathlons etc. The novelty comes from the fact that many events, especially in Romania, have the component of “planet”. People are participating because e.g. part of the fee is financing ecological or social projects in different regions of the country. The aim of this paper is to analyze the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship in relation with different sports events and answer to some questions. How many organizers take into account the social part of the events? Are they more interested in ecological, social or other type of value? Participants decide where to go based on the social or ecological causes financed? Based on different research methods the author is outlining the typology of sports events at the amateur level in Romania and the interest of combining the profit with the social value goal. The results of the study might be of interest for several groups of stakeholders (public authorities, NGOs, companies, managers etc.) when developing public policies, proposing life-work balance programs and other measures aimed at stimulating sustainable entrepreneurship.

The year 2020 began with a health crisis, asserted in the same year, as the coronavirus pandemic. In this sense, world governments have taken measures to protect their national economies, measures such as limiting exports or social distancing. In 2022, the economy showed signs of recovery, when in February, war broke out between Ukraine and Russia. Thus, the two events negatively impacted world trade. In this paper, the aim is to point out the impact of the health, economic and war crisis on Romania-Brazil commercial relations, in the period 2019–2023, on Brazilian investments in Romania and on Romanian investments in Brazil. Romania is part of the European Union, being also a military, humanitarian and economic support for Ukrainians. Otherwise, Brazil is part of a totally different political structure, being a partner and ally of Russia. A descriptive research will be carried out on Romania-Brazil trade, in the period 2019–2023, based on the information on the Comexstat platform. In order to identify Brazilian investments in Romania, the research will be carried out conformable of the information provided by the National Trade Registry Office, and the research on Romanian investments in Brazil will be carried out conformable of the information provided by Banco Central do Brasil. The year 2023 represents the best economic year for trade between Romania and Brazil from the period 2019–2023, as commercial exchanges increased by 16% in 2023, compared to 2019. Regarding Brazilian investments in Romania, they are increasing, but Romanian investments in Brazil are decreasing. This work is innovative, because it sheds light on the commercial relationship between two countries with a similar culture, during a period of crisis, countries that are located in two different political and ideological blocs.