The European Commission announced on October 15 that it had endorsed a positive preliminary assessment of the six targets and 62 out of 68 milestones linked to Romania's third payment request for EUR 2 billion (net of pre-financing) under the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

The Commission found that six milestones have not been fulfilled at this stage. This concerns reforms of the governance of state-owned enterprises, as well as investments in transport, and a reform of the tax regime for microenterprises.

The Commission, therefore, proposed to suspend an unspecified part of the payment.

Economedia reported that some EUR 1.1 billion of the EUR 2 billion net disbursement would be suspended.

The specific size of the suspended payments will be announced after Romania answers the Commission's observations. Romania will have afterwards six months to meet the pending milestones and unblock the money.

The Commission said it has now sent its positive preliminary assessment of the milestones and targets that it considers satisfactorily fulfilled to the  Economic and Financial Committee (EFC), which has four weeks to deliver its opinion.

Following the EFC's opinion on the positive preliminary assessment and after assessing the observations submitted by Romania, the Commission will adopt a payment decision, after which the payment to Romania can take place.

Romania submitted the request for the third disbursement in December 2023, for a total of EUR 2.67 billion: EUR 1.86 billion of grants and EUR 0.81 billion of loans.

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iulian@romania-insider.com