Romania will receive EUR 1.3 billion out of the EUR 2 billion (pre-financing not included) envisaged under the third Resilience Facility request sent to the European Commission and has six months to meet all targets and get the rest of the money, the Ministry of Investments and European projects (MIPE) announced.
Romania has completed the microenterprise reform, but even if it took steps in this regard, it failed to address the excessive spending with "special pensions" and also failed to improve the corporate governance in state-owned enterprises.
Noting that some of the measures linked to the payment request have not yet been met, the EC activated the "suspension of payments" procedure for Romania, as provided for in the Resilience Facility Regulation.
Romania has one month to submit an official response to the Commission's letter and six months to implement all necessary measures to fully meet the milestones and targets in the payment request and fully unblock the payment.
The European Commission informed Romania that milestone 215 ("Entry into force of the legislative framework to reduce expenditure on special pensions") is not met at this stage.
In addition, Romania still has to improve the corporate governance of state-owned energy companies, operationalize corporate governance policies for state-owned enterprises, and appoint management at the National Agency for Monitoring and Evaluation of Public Enterprises – AMEPIP.
Romania has EUR 28 billion available under the national plan for the Resilience Facility (PNRR), which is disbursed through eight payment requests tied to extensive reforms and investments. With the programme set to expire, the government has time to submit two to three more requests on top of the three already sent.
iulian@romania-insider.com
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