Importance of rural areas and the regional profiles of EU member states

The paper presents in an original manner the theme of EU “importance of rural areas”, based on the two context-related baseline indicators presented in the Rural Development Report 2013, for EU Member States, at year 2010. After presenting the importance of classification the territorial units for regional statistics in EU,and the urban-rural typology of regions, the study describes the “importance of rural areas” for the Romanian regional profile. Using cluster classifying method, in SPSS there were identified two clusters of EU countries which define two types of regional profiles. By applying the multivariate factorial method of Principal Components Analysis, in SPSS, the regional profiles of EU Member States were defined, in the context of ”Importance of rural areas”