Arad County Council
25 years of existence and 24 years on the European map of Regions
The Arad County Council (Romania) joined the Assembly of the European Regions (AER) at the General Assembly in Benidorm (Spain), in December 1993. It was the second Romanian administrative-territorial entity to join AER following the Hunedoara County, that joined one year earlier in Santiago de Compostela.
It was considered a privilege and an honour to be a fully-fledged member of such a wide European network of regions, to be part of a select club where expectations were rather high.
In many ways we were pioneers and forerunners of the Romanian counties, lobbying for AER and convincing other regions to join the organisation. Subsequently, many Romanian regions started looking beyond the horizon and sought new opportunities, leading to their immediate integration into the AER family.
In this manner, Romania as a country is very well represented, out of 41 counties 32 are full members with an active participation in the life of the organisation. The Arad County Council even hosted two commission meetings.
The immediate benefits did not fail to show. Members of the political level and civil servants took part in the Centurio Programme, to be trained in European standards, to share their experience, knowledge and examples of good practice to others and to display other ideas in their home regions. The Eurodyssey Programme has been another successful achievement the Arad County Council was involved in. In fact, AER inspired regions and acted as an incubator for the ideas of all its members.
The Arad County Council, as a local actor and decisional exponent, was an efficient promoter of the basic AER concepts and principals of subsidiarity and cohesion.
Today, the unemployment rate in the county is lower than 2.5% and in the Arad city lower than 1%, due to the well trained labour force, economic and development potential and important investors. Arad County has access to the highway, linking Arad to Budapest, Wien and the rest of Europe.
The Arad County Council is currently working on the development of a metropolitan area in the Western part of Romania, to create an urban agglomeration of 1 million inhabitants, unique in the region.
We are now in an important process of presenting Arad and the Arad County as tourism destinations; therefore we would suggest you visit our website www.visitarad.ro and discover the many features of Arad, including multiculturalism, diversity and natural experiences.
Now, that the Arad County Council celebrates its 25th anniversary and 24 years of AER membership, we wish to continue further on that fruitful cooperation with AER and all its member regions, with all our friends from abroad. We modestly started our relation with Europe in 1993; we kept on learning and building, open to the exterior, with a European attitude and today we are proud to be a development role model at regional level. www.cjarad.ro
