Educational institutions, especially universities, have been major pillars in societal transformation throughout society’s history. They have been leading change through their discoveries, research results, and foremost, their example. Nowadays, universities have once again taken the role of leading change in a world that is profoundly determined to have a sustainable approach to life, paying attention to the long-term effects of their actions. In this sense, under the impact of deep digitalization, this paper advocates for the sustainable development of universities regarding campuses’ expansion to rural areas. Moreover, it was demonstrated that sustainable development can be achieved by embracing the potential of digitalization. Based on a multicriteria analysis of the Romanian development regions, the research results showed that the rural area might be a welcoming environment for campuses of sustainable universities, based on digitalization at the level of the rural area in all activity fields, which is an initiative that would generate positive outcomes on many levels for different types of stakeholders, such as universities, students, staff, rural area population, and the nearby business environment. Future research aims to approach and explain the compounded effects of such an approach in depth and establish an even clearer picture of how beneficial such an expansion could prove to all factors considered under a knowledge-based society with digitized information as a vital pillar.

This research paper fills a literature gap by tapping into Europe’s Just Transition to green energy production and consumption models and introduces empirically derived trends. The mix of analysed variables was targeted at sustainable energy transformation models according to complementary economic research areas. Based on the clustered heat maps method, double dendrograms were constructed to identify socioeconomic and environmental patterns that characterize highly economic-efficient and sustainable transition patterns from the standard energy production and consumption model to the environmental-friendly and cost-efficient model in the European area. Results show that Austria, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and Luxembourg followed the patterns of highly economically performant European countries that turned energy and resource productivity in their favour based on multiple factors: recycling, R&D, innovation, digitization. The opposite was observed in the case of many South-Eastern European countries. Robustness checks were performed based on the linear discriminant analysis methodology and results confirmed that Northern European countries lead the change to a more sustainable future. In this context, this research brings empirical results for decision-makers and aims to facilitate a better understanding for adapting policies according to national needs, as well as to the patterns of success identified in the case of European leaders.

This paper aims at identifying the extent to which Romania has accessed European funds for agriculture and rural development in the 2014-2020 period. During this financing period, Romania has received more than 8.12 billion euros from the European Union budget, more precisely from the Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFDR), through the National Rural Development Programme (NRDP). Five percent of the available amount was allocated to the Leader approach at local level and at least 30% was allotted for environmental protection measures. This paper will analyze the number of projects which were submitted, selected and contracted and the payments made until 2019. Subsequently, an analysis will be carried out of the NRDP sub-measures in order to prove the usefulness and necessity of this type of structural programme. The rate of absorbtion of European funds will be closely correlated with indicators such as the evolution of the GDP / inhabitant, the population and the number of enterprises in rural areas, the employed population and the number of enterprises in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, the development of villages through the construction or modernization of roads, sewage infrastructure, water and gas. To conclude, the positive and negative aspects regarding the implementation of European funds will be listed, especially in the fields of agriculture and rural development in Romania.

The dynamics of the labor market have been significantly influenced and impacted in recent decades by the scale of globalization, not only from a socio-economic standpoint, but also from the perspective of generating the premises of destroying boundaries. Taking this into consideration, our research is aimed at highlighting the socio-economic impact of migration on the labor market in the Romanian Danube Region in order to create a framework which can be used when elaborating a solid action plan meant to increase the socio-economic attractivity in the analyzed region. This research was carried out by resorting to the multicriterial analysis, aimed at quantifying the state of development of the analyzed counties from the perspective of clearly defined socio-economic indicators. Additionally, the linear regression research method was applied in order to ensure a more in-depth analysis of the relationship between local employment and the departure from domicile. The main finding was that Mehedinţi County has greater potential for socio-economic development than the neighboring county, even though the population is not encouraged to remain in the rural areas, one of the reasons being the lack of attractiveness of the local labor market. The designed econometric model confirms (66.17%) this result in the case of the localities part of Mehedinţi County.

He economic development that preceded the economic crisis of 2008 has caused a lack of staff on the labor market, in particular of specialists in certain key areas, in all developed countries. The acute shortage of skilled staff at European level is also found among Romania, where companies play an important role in defining society at local and regional level. Romania has about 19 million people, of whom only 5 million are full-time employees, and the labor market estimates a shortage of more than 1 million employees in 2021, according to a study by audit and consulting firm PwC. In this respect, it was considered appropriate to analyze two development macroregions in Romania, which register smallest, respectively the and largest population in terms of national level. The general objective of the research is to identify the macroregion that has a greater potential for making private and even public investments. In this way, the method of multicriteria analysis at the level of applied methodology was used, so that current and future entrepreneurs can observe a clear delimitation of the two opposite areas of the country, regarding the existing potential on the labor market. Being positioned in opposite parts of the country, Macroregion Two and Macroregion Four each have certain specific economic characteristics, which can lead to a sustainable maroregional strategy for on the stability and prosperity of the labor market.