Population Connectivity to Water Infrastructure: the Impact of European Funds on Regional Development

This paper analyzes the evolution of population connectivity to drinking water infrastructure in Romania for the period 2014-2023, as well as forecasts for the future period 2024-2027, evaluating the impact of European funds on the process of regional development and convergence. The methodology is a quantitative one, based on the processing of data provided by INS Tempo for the four macroregions of the country through the IBM SPSS Statistics software. The descriptive analysis and visualization through multiple line diagrams reveal a general trend of increasing the degree of connectivity in all the analyzed territorial units. However, the obtained results highlight deep and persistent regional disparities, statistically supported by a high standard deviation of 558,265.26 units compared to the general average of 3,387,834.38. While Macroregion 3 remains consistently the leader in connectivity, Macroregion 4 records the lowest values, although it follows an upward trend. Correlating infrastructure data with the GDP/capita indicator suggests that regional economic development is closely linked to investments in public utilities. The study concludes that although European funds have accelerated the development of water infrastructure, the pace of convergence is uneven, of which better targeted public policies are needed to reduce structural gaps between macroregions.