In 1992, the Romanian Government asked the European Union (EU) for help in setting up reforms for its hospital system. The authorities wanted to tackle 2 areas: the organization of the hospitals, in order to reduce the number of beds, and the setting up of a specific system to identify social cases in hospitals. The ‘PHARE Programme’ of the EU enables projects to be carried out in eastern European countries. The ‘Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris’ was appointed to conduct this programme by the Hospital Committee of the European Communities. The experiment in Bucharest is described. Three instruments, which serve as tools for hospital restructuring in the United States and In France, were used: i) a one-month survey concerning a care procedure - acute myocardial Infarction, ii) a ‘one-day’ survey and iii) the hospital management project concerning 4 pilot hospitals. In the survey of care procedure, 79 cases were inducted. The major problems concern the pre-hospital stage examination and the rehabilitation stage. We obtained 1,325 questionnaires for the one-day survey (1,607 had been expected). The number of patients with medico-social problems was no more than 20% and then only in the psychiatric hospital. The hospital management project showed that the board managers needed hospital management training. It was not possible to reduce the number of beds in the pilot hospitals. These results will be discussed In the framework of the present situation of the Romanian health care system. Proposals for the near future will be presented.