The crucial importance of mountain regions in the socioeconomic and environmental cohesion policies is underlined by key documents in Romania as well as in the European Union. However, the lack of a unique definition or set of criteria used to delineate the mountain regions, in order to analyze their characteristics constitutes a barrier to the elaboration of a common strategy for their development. This study has created a methodology based upon

New strategies of the European Union, focused directly on regional development or originated from different areas, but leading to changes in this field, had resulted into a set of indices used to monitor the effects of their implementation. Previous studies suggest that flexible systems perform better and could strengthen the administrative capacity of accessing structural and cohesion funds. Our study used the Geographical Information Systems (GIS)