The president of the junior ruling Liberal Party, Nicolae Ciucă, urged prime minister Marcel Ciolacu "to urgently explain what he will do so that Romania does not lose the approximately EUR 1.1bn from the Resilience Facility" suspended by the European Commission for six milestones not met by the country.

Ciucă thus validates the EUR 1.1bn value of the retained money, not yet announced by the EC but surfaced in the media last week.

Liberal leader Ciucă, a presidential candidate just like prime minister Ciolacu, claimed that the latter played down the risks of partial disbursement of Resilience Facility money and highlighted that the EC suspends part of the payment at a critical moment for the 2025 budget planning (the third disbursement is expected for this year).

"The worst thing is that the EC's decision hit us just when we needed to know how to project the budget for the year 2025," Nicolae Ciucă wrote on Facebook.

The European Commission approved on Tuesday, October 15, a positive preliminary assessment of the six targets and 62 of the 68 milestones related to Romania's third payment request in the amount of EUR 2 billion, without pre-financing, under the Resilience facility.

(Photo: Alexandru Marinescu/ Dreamstime)

iulian@romania-insider.com