Background:
World Health Organization calls for comprehensive measures for tobacco control which includes legislative, socio-economical and educational measures. This presentation has two objectives. First it gives an overview of the tobacco control in Romania. Second it gives examples which illustrate the role plaid by non-governmental organizations in establishing activities and cooperation for long term strategies in this field.

Methods:
The results are based on data from literature as well as personal experience of the authors. The presentation underlines the strengths and weakness of tobacco control in Romania, giving a special attention to the role plaid by non-governmental organizations.

Results:
The strengths of the tobacco control in Romania includes the legislation which limits the exposure to tobacco control advertisement and exposure to passive smoking in public places, the presence of pictogram on tobacco packages, increasing prices for tobacco products, development of some educational programs, including a smoking cessation program using the information technology. The weaknesses include the limited funding for educational activities for tobacco prevention and support for quitting smoking, poor reinforcement of legislation which prohibits the access of adolescents to tobacco products. The non-governmental organizations plaid an important role in developing national and international cooperation which stimulated the development of educational activities for tobacco prevention and cessation, training and capacity building as well as advocacy for adopting and implementation of legislation for tobacco control.

Conclusions:
Non-governmental organizations play an important role in enhancing tobacco control in Romania through a wide cooperation with national and international partners, which several times stimulated the implication and commitment of several organizations in this field.