The European Commissioner for Agriculture Dacian Ciolos, who visited Romania last week, said the country should take advantage of the EUR 100 million funding for rural development in strategic investments, such as sewage and broadband Internet for the country's villages. “It is important that Romania's rural areas have Internet access, as it is a key element in economic development,” said Ciolos. The country could lose the funding if it does not speed up the process. Local authorities have not yet drafted a feasibility study or put an implementation strategy in place for connecting Romania's villages to Internet.

He discussed the  the need to speed up absorption of EU funds on agriculture with the country's Agriculture Minister Stelian Fuia and the PM Mihai Ungureanu. He also met the IT&C Minister Razvan Mustea. Over 3,000 Romanian villages are not currently connected to the Internet. The Communications Ministry has so far spent EUR 80 million on connecting Romania's rural areas to the Internet. Romania has among the lowest Internet use rates in the EU, statistics show, but it has some of highest Internet connection speeds in the world. More than half of Romanians have never used the Internet, the highest figure in the EU. Only 47 percent of Romanian households have any kind of Internet connection, this ranks Romania second to last, in between Bulgaria ( 45 percent ) and Greece (50 percent ). The percentage of Romanian households with high speed broadband connection is just 31 percent, again the lowest in Europe, behind Bulgaria and Greece and less than half the EU average. Romania has the second highest Internet download speed in the world, with 1,909KBp, followed by Bulgaria with 1,611KBp, according to a study conducted by Pando Networks.

The European Commission has recently announced it would block the Human Resources funding line, after the 2011 report found irregularities in the HR operational program in Romania. The problems refer to project selection and first level verification in the EUR 3.5 billion HR program called POSDRU, which, according to the regulations on structural funds, trigger a payment hiatus of six months.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Arhivafoto.ro)