Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă attended the meeting of the Interministerial Committee for the Coordination of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR)

PRESS RELEASE

 

Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă: We continue the very good dialogue with the representatives of the European Commission to clarify all aspects related to the capitalization of the funds available to Romania through PNRR

 

Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă chaired today the extraordinary meeting of the Interministerial Committee for the Coordination of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), occasion on which the state of the PNRR implementation was analyzed after the submission of the first two requests for payment. The talks also referred to the preparation of the fulfillment of the milestones and targets assumed for 2023 under the implementation calendar, from the perspective of submitting the next payment requests.

"We have a very good dialogue with the representatives of the European Commission to clarify how we met the targets and milestones from the second PNRR payment request, sent in December of last year. This process will be followed by the validation from the European partners and the receipt, by Romania, of the funds related to this payment request, necessary for our development projects", stated Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă.

More than 5 billion euros of the 6.3 billion euros already received last year from PNRR - pre-financing and the first installment have already been contracted. Moldova highway, A7, an important segment of the Transilvania highway, the railway between Caransebeș-Arad-Timișoara or between Lugoj and Deva, the energy efficiency contracts concluded by the Ministry of Development already have the financing secured. Calls for projects for the production of batteries and other green energy production resources in Romania will be launched.

The discussions during the meeting focused on the analysis of a set of milestones and targets that require clarification in the validation process with the European Commission, including the draft law on special pensions, the law on the state companies’ governance, the finalization of governance procedures in the energy sector for the appointment of Board members.

Until the submission of payment request number 3, the aspects related to the reduction of grants as a result of the economic growth recorded by Romania, the adjustment of RePowerEU, and the validation of the closing of milestones and targets related to the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2022 will have to be clarified.

After the first two payment requests submitted to the European Commission last year, Romania is now preparing the 3rd payment request, which has a submission deadline at the end of March 2023, with a total value of 3.243 billion euros ( 2.147 billion euros in non-reimbursable financial support and 1.095 billion euros in loan support). A number of 77 milestones and targets related to the 3rd quarter of 2022 and 4th quarter of 2022 are subject to the 3rd payment request.

In today's discussions, aspects related to the working document on the PNRR amendment were also discussed, in the context in which the representatives of the European Commission, including on the occasion of the monitoring mission from November 7-11, 2022, reconfirmed the fact that the third payment request should be submitted only after the amendment of the PNRR according to the proposal to amend Regulation (EU) no. 241/2021, a request that the Commission sent to all member states.

"Romania will join the European states that request more time for the PNRR implementation. We are preparing the necessary arguments and are in constant contact with the European Commission to extend the period necessary to implement the investments related to REPowerEU, as well as the other categories of energy investments, and to increase the energy production capacity", stated the Minister of Investments and European Projects Marcel Boloș.

  "Attracting European money represents a chance for the future of Romania, which we can capitalize through our current efforts. The results we managed to achieve last year proved that we could be efficient. 2022 was the best year since Romania accessed European money, exceeding 11 billion euros. We must maintain this pace so that, on the one hand, we manage, through dialogue with the European Commission, to validate everything we manage to do on a national level to reach our assumed targets and milestones, but, at the same time, to use effectively every euro of the almost 30 billion made available to us by the European Commission. We have a good chance that this year we will exceed the level achieved in 2022, using these important resources for the modernization and development of Romania", stated Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă.