The tourism sector development in Romania, as in the rest of the region, is a central topic in scientific and public discourse as well. While Romania has almost two finished EU funding programming periods – there is the time for the evaluation. The study explores tourism development opportunities at the intersection of the 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 programming periods in the light of EU funding. Our goal is to contextualize and discuss the tourism development topic in Romania beyond the brief presentation of the funding opportunities offered by the two budget periods. In the analysis the following research questions are in focus: in the light of the sectoral priorities, what is the importance of the tourism sector development in Romania's development strategy; what the numbers showed, what lessons has been learnt Romania from the 2007-2013 programming period; to what extent has been able Romania to eliminate the errors for the 2014-2020 programming based on the earlier conclusions and bad experiences? Firstly there is in the focus a public policy analysis, after that, during a seconder data analysis the study will give a statistical description about the volume and the nature of the tourism investments trough EU funding in Romania.