The main objective of this paper is to identify the intensity and the sense of the impact that eco-innovation and recycling exert on raw material consumption in the European Union member-states. The basic hypothesis is that eco-innovation and recycling have a significant influence on raw material consumption. The authors consider that, in the long run, by promoting eco-innovation and recycling, countries will minimize their demand and use of raw materials. In the paper, the material footprint per capita has been considered as an adequate indicator to measure the material consumption induced by economic and social activities. The model used has estimated the influence of eco-innovation and recycling on the material footprint per capita using panel data regression by considering the 27 EU countries, for the 2010–2019 time period. The authors found that the most adequate econometric model is the panel model with fixed effects. The respective econometric model validates the hypothesis that eco-innovation and recycling have significant influence on reducing the material footprint per capita and reveals heterogeneity existing among EU countries. At the same time, the model shows the intensity of influence exerted by each regressor. The eco-innovation and recycling have an important role in decreasing the material footprint per capita and should be in the centre of policies aimed at decoupling the economic growth from the raw material consumption.

Ensuring the convergence in the process of the Romanian economic and social environment adaptation, to the requirements of internal market of European Union, but also the alignment of public policies with good practices of European Union, led to the emergence of new types of policies and instruments, for different fields of implementation, in the new conjuncture. As a consequence the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, governments all over the world, imposed restrictions intended for the protection of population, with effects on the economic and social life. In Romania, the government's intervention policies consisted of actions aimed at preventing the collapse in the national economy, materialized in plans, programs and measures, supported by laws and Government Decisions, which constitutes as basic instruments of the period 2020-2021. The present paper tries to present, in a synthetic manner, two essential public policy instruments used in Romania, to combat the negative effects caused by pandemic crisis, respectively, National Recovery and Resilience Plan and National Reform Programme 2021. The conclusions and proposals which ends the paper express the essence of the results obtained. The research methodology used was the documentation from specialty literature, focus on significant issues, synthesis and processing of information, through the author’ own interpretation.

Appeared in the last decades of the last century, against the background of economic and global developments, determined by the internationalization of production and free movement of capital, the New Public Management aimed to the transition from the bureaucratic principles of hierarchical setup, to the development of new practices of management . This change had to meet the requirements of the market economy, signifying another form of approach to administration and public management. The purpose of the changes was to reform the public sector organizations, increase their competitiveness and efficiency in the use of resources and the provision of services. The present study propose a short presentation of some opinions of theorists, regarding some limits and dysfunctions, which may occur in the application of the New Public Management, different from some successes of the changes accomplished. Other issues were also addressed, such as the occurrence of reversible trends in the reform process. Given the new challenges of society and the increased demands of citizens, the phenomenon requires efforts to find the best practices of the New Public Management, which to lead to the achievement of the proposed objectives. The research methodology used was the study and processing of ideas from foreign and domestic literature.