In recent decades, the European Union's interest to rural areas has increased. This interest is somewhat explained in that these areas are mainly characterized by weaker economic and social development than urban ones. The aim of this paper has been to achieve a typology of Romanian counties on rurality and competitiveness. This approach has generated a synthetic image of their spatial differentiation. As a working method, the multivariate analysis of two sets of indicators that define the two

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... ssues was used, followed by a comparison of the results. The main conclusion indicates that there is an inverse relation between rurality and competitiveness / well-being: the higher the rurality the lower the territorial competitiveness. The results of this work can be a starting point to design specific rural development policies.