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 Romania, a country located in South-East Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory. It shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south.
The territory's recorded history encompasses such eras as the Dacians, Roman Empire, Kingdom of Hungary, and Ottoman Empire.
As a nation-state, the country was formed by the merging of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859 and it gained recognition of its independence in 1878. Later, in 1918, they were joined by Transylvania, Bukovina and Bassarabia. At the end of World War II, parts of its territories (roughly the present day Moldova) were occupied by USSR and Romania became a member of the Warsaw Pact. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Romania started a series of political and economic reforms. After a decade of post independence economic problems, Romania made economic reforms such as low flat tax rates in 2005 and joined the European Union in January 1, 2007. While Romania's income level remains one of the lowest in the European Union, reforms have increased the growth speed. Romania is now an upper-middle income country economy.
Romania has the 9th largest territory and the 7th largest population (with 22 million people)[ among the European Union member states. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the 6th largest city in the EU with 1.9 million people. In 2007, Sibiu, a city in Transylvania, was chosen as a European Capital of Culture. Romania also joined NATO on March 29, 2004, and is also a member of the Latin Union, of the Francophonie and of OSCE. Romania is a semi-presidential unitary state.
Some Facts about Romania:
• Capital Bucharest (Bucure?ti)
• Official languages Romanian
• Ethnic groups 89.5% Romanians, 6.6% Hungarians, 2.5% Roma, 1.4% other minority groups
• Demonym Romanian Government Unitary semi-presidential republic
• Formation: Transylvania -10th century
Wallachia 1290
Moldavia 1346
First Unification 1599
Reunification of Wallachia and Moldavia January 24, 1859
Officially recognised independence July 13, 1878
Reunification with Transylvania December 1, 1918
• EU accession January 1, 2007
• Area - Total 238,391 km²
• Population - July 2008 estimate 22,246,862
National Day: December 1 – Reunification with Transylvania.
Religion
 Romania is a secular state, thus having no national religion. The dominant religious body is the Romanian Orthodox Church, an autocephalous church within the Eastern Orthodox communion; its members make up 86.7% of the population according to the 2002 census.
Other important Christian denominations include Roman Catholicism (4.7%), Protestantism (3.7%), Pentecostalism (1.5%) and the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church (0.9%). Romania also has a Muslim minority concentrated in Dobrogea, mostly of Turkish ethnicity and numbering 67,500 people.
Based on the 2002 census data, there are also 6,179 Jews, 23,105 people who are of no religion and/or atheist, and 11,734 who refused to answer. On December 27, 2006, a new Law on Religion was approved under which religious denominations can only receive official registration if they have at least 20,000 members, or about 0.1 percent of Romania's total population. National Flag
 The national flag of Romania is a tricolour with vertical stripes: beginning from the flagpole, blue, yellow and red. It has a width-length ratio of 2:3.
Romanian Language or Daco-Romanian is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. The differences between these varieties are usually very small, usually consisting in a few dozen regional words and some phonetic changes.    
 
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