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| EUROPEAN FUNDS FOR ROMANIA 07/11/2008 |
| (2008-11-07) |
| Last updated: 2008-11-10 15:38 EET |
The absorption of European funds is Romania’s main weakness, two years after its EU accession. That is the conclusion reached by Romanian personalities from the political and business environment who on Thursday attended a debate on that theme at the European Centre of International Relations and Strategic Studies in Brussels. They underscored that Romanians were disappointed with the slow pace of changes occurring after integration, although over 60% of them had expressed their confidence in the European institutions, and only 16% voiced their trust in politicians.
In 2008, Romania should absorb between 2.5 and 3 billion euros worth of EU funds, twice as much as in 2007, the first year of its accession. According to Romanian Minister of Economy and Finance, Varujan Vosganian, who said at the beginning of the year that 2008 would be the year of performances in the absorption of European funds, the main areas absorbing the funds are infrastructure and constructions. He upholds that no fresh EU member state had a very high absorption rate of European funds in the first post-accession years.
The Romanian Minister of Economy and Finance says that the difficulties in the absorption of funds are mainly triggered by the companies’ low capacity of coming up with offers and the local officials’ low capacity of preparing projects. According to statistics, over 4400 projects worth 7.6 billion euros were submitted until late September. 277 projects of them worth two billion euros have been approved, EU funds accounting for 1.4 billion euros. For those projects, 117 funding contracts worth 1.11 billion euros have been concluded, European funds amounting to less than one billion euros.
With the global financial crisis, felt in Romania as well, there are all chances for the absorption of those funds to be slowed down a lot. Bucharest risks having a larger contribution within the Union than the funds it gets from the EU. In order to prevent that situation, experts believe that banks should simplify the procedure of giving loans to co-fund projects with European funds, all the more so as end-users will face problems anyway because of soaring costs.
According to experts, banks should be less bureaucratic and implement a special procedure. Romanian government officials express their optimism about Romania’s having a higher absorption rate of EU funds. They believe that 2009 will be a crucial year in the field and that depending on the measures to be taken very soon, even at the beginning of next year, prospects will be outlined until 2013.
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