The European Commission will disburse to Romania the second tranche under the Resilience facility, some EUR 2.8 billion, in September, after concluding that 47 (of 49) milestones and 2 (of 20 targets) were met.

The problem is, however, spending the money – Ziarul Financiar points out, highlighting the very low (1.3%) effective absorption rate.

Specifically, only EUR 340 million of the EUR 6 billion already disbursed by the European Union (the payment in advance and the first disbursement) were transferred to final beneficiaries. Romania will thus have in its account by September some one-third of the EUR 27 billion earmarked by the European Commission to the country under the Resilience facility.

The remaining EUR 54 million of the second disbursement will be disbursed when and if the country meets the remaining two milestones, for which it has a six-month period.

The government still failed to meet milestone 129, related to the signing of contracts for the construction of a new electrolyzer (H2 production) capacity of at least 100 MW, and milestone 133, related to the signing of contracts for high-efficiency cogeneration projects on gas and district heating. 

The Romanian government should send payment requests 3 and 4 this year. Request 3 was already postponed until August due to non-fulfilment of milestones (including the new legislation on “special pensions”).

iulian@romania-insider.com

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