Romania is a state located in southeastern Central Europe, on the lower Danube, north of the Balkan Peninsula and on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. [7] On its territory is located almost the entire surface of the Danube Delta and the southern and central part of the Carpathian Mountains. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Serbia to the southwest, Hungary to the northwest, Ukraine to the north and east, and the Republic of Moldova to the east, and the Black Sea coast to the southeast. Throughout history, different parts of today's Romanian territory have been part of or under the administration of Dacia, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Romania appeared as a state, led by Alexandru Ioan Cuza, in 1859, through the union between Moldavia and Wallachia, maintaining the autonomy and the status of a tributary state towards the Ottoman Empire, which the two principalities had. It was recognized as an independent country 19 years later. In 1918, after the First World War, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with Romania forming Greater Romania or interwar Romania, which had the largest territorial expansion in the history of Romania (295,641 km2). During World War II (in 1940), Greater Romania, under pressure from Nazi Germany, ceded the territories of Hungary (northeastern Transylvania), Bulgaria (the Quadrilateral) and the Soviet Union (Bessarabia, Herta, and northern Bukovina). After the abolition of Antonescu's dictatorship on August 23, 1944, Romania withdrew from the alliance with the Axis Powers, siding with the Allied Powers (United Kingdom, United States, France and the Soviet Union). By the Peace Treaty of Paris signed on February 10, 1947, from the ceded territories of the former Greater Romania, Northern Transylvania was recovered. After the overthrow of the communist regime installed in Romania (1989) and after the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the state initiated a series of economic and political reforms. After a decade of economic problems, Romania introduced new general economic reforms (such as the single tax rate in 2005) and joined the NATO politico-military alliance on March 29, 2004 and the European Union on January 1, 2007.
