The Foundation for the Defense of the Citizen Against State Abuses (FACIAS) reports the difficult situation in which the Romanian state finds itself in terms of implementing the measures included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), the consequence being the loss of billions of euros in European funding.
FACIAS has asked government decision-makers to detail the state of Romania's implementation of the NRRP and has learned that more than 4 months have passed since it submitted its second request for payment under the NRRP and that the European Commission has not yet given a favourable opinion.
According to a reply received by FACIAS from the Ministry of Investment and European Projects (MIEP), this year Romania has not received money from the NRRP because it has not met the requirements for 3 milestones included in the plan. We refer here to:
- Milestone 129 which requires the signing of contracts for the construction of at least 100 MW of new power plant capacity;
- Milestone 133 which requires the signing of contracts for high efficiency gas-fired cogeneration and district heating projects;
- Milestone 213 involving the entry into force of changes to the regulatory framework to ensure the sustainability of Pillar 2 pensions.
Failure to meet these milestones results in the loss of €1.3 billion of NRRP funding.
Problems also for claim number 3
An official reply from MIEP, sent to FACIAS, shows that Romania also has problems with the third funding claim. The Ministry estimates that the third payment request will be sent to the European Commission by the end of June 2023 ONLY if certain issues are clarified, the most important of which is the approval of payment request 2. Given that we do not even have approval for the second claim, it is quite foreseeable that we will not receive any money from claim 3 either, even if it is successfully submitted.
And if the MIEP has reservations about the third tranche, the Ministry of Finance has not even considered the possibility of paying the 3 billion. A recently published document reveals that the Ministry of Finance has forecast only €1.9 billion in receipts from the NRRP this year, although according to the plan submitted by Romania, our country should have received around €5 billion this year from tranches 2 and 3 of the NRRP. It is thus clear that the political decision-makers are convinced that Romania will not receive the third tranche this year.
FACIAS finds this worrying, given that the European money we will lose from the NRRP was intended for major investments.
The full response of the MIEP can be read here.