The present invention relates to a block partitioning structure from among the video coding schemes, and a method and apparatus for encoding and decoding the block partitioning structure. The video encoding and decoding method comprises the steps of: combining two or more encoding units of maximum size into a single encoding unit group; acquiring encoding data corresponding to the combined single encoding unit group; and decoding, according to a decoding order, the two or more encoding units of maximum size contained in the single encoding unit group.