Population: 22.46 million. Ethnic Hungarians account for some 7.1 per cent, Gypsies 1.8 per cent and Germans 0.5 per cent. Religion: More than 86 per cent Orthodox, 5 per cent Roman Catholic, 3.5 per cent Protestant. There are also 9,000 Jews.
Area: 237,500 sq km. Romania is bounded to the north and northeast by the ex-Soviet republics of Ukraine and Moldova, to the east by the Black Sea, to the south by Bulgaria, to the southwest by Yugoslavia and the northwest by Hungary.
Economy: GDP per head was $6,000 in 1999, down from $6,595 in 1996, when the centrist coalition replaced the left-wing administration which took over from the communists in 1989. Romania begun accession talks this year with the EU but it is the poorest of the 12 candidates, with 44 per cent of the population subsisting on an EU poverty minimum of $4.30 a day. Only a third of the economy is in private hands. Year-on-year inflation ran at some 43 per cent last month.