Absorption rate of EU funds up by 10pct in 100 days of governing

The absorption rate of EU funds increased by 10.48 percent since December 2015, Minister of European Funds Cristian Ghinea announced in a report published on August 22. The report presented an overview of the activity Ghinea is heading during the first 100 days of governing.

Accordingly, the current absorption rate of funds available to Romania during the 2007-2013 financial cycle increased to 76.69 percent, from 58.67 percent in November 2015, when the Ciolos Government started its term. In December 2015, when Minister Ghinea took over his position, the absorption rate was 66.21 percent.

“When taking office I set two directions: on the one hand to unlock situations in the past, in order to launch the financing, and on the other hand to kick-start a simple and functional mechanism to to attract funds, in the current programming, for a long-term impact. I took over a ministry placed at the intersection of many types of problems – an IT system with shortcomings, a headquarters with problems, unlawful contracts, negative perceptions, complaint,” Minister Ghinea said in the report.

“With one hand we had to handle crises and recurring emergencies, and with the other – to attract the European money necessary to Romania’s development,” Ghinea added.

According to a press release accompanying the report, the total amount of guidelines launched from the 2014-2020 budget, available for projects, stood at 13.317 billion, compared to EUR 6.295 billion. Moreover, the process of accreditation of Management Authorities in charge of each operational program using EU funds was unlocked. Reimbursement requests cannot be sent to the European Commission without accreditation.

Moreover, according to the press release, the reconstruction of the IT system is currently making up for the severe delays that were endangering the process of accreditation. Furthermore, important steps were made in coordinating the fulfillment of the ex ante conditionalities, which were negotiated in 2014. Although there is a risk of EU funds being blocked in 2017, little efforts were made to meet them.

“The Ministry of European Funds is undergoing an authentic institutional reform, completing their structure with entities that can spur the development of projects and anti-fraud structures,” the press release informs. Furthermore, “the European funds are geared towards the real impact, towards what this sizable financial effort of the European Union and of Romania is leaving behind,” noting that “European money is becoming a genuine weapon for fighting poverty by linking the programs designed by MFE with the needs noticed around the country, within the Anti-poverty package promoted by the Government,” the report reads. “We are intervening on poverty – a phenomenon affecting 40 percent of the Romanian population – in an integrated manner and completely new in the 26 years of post-1989 governing,” Ghinea said in the report.

According to the report, the ministry is focusing on launching the calls for projects for the new financial cycle 2014-2020. “There are 39 calls for projects launched, with an allocation of over EUR 13 billion – almost half of the allocation. I repeat: we are receiving projects for half of the 2014-2020 budget. Most of the guides were unlocked in the 100 days of mandate. We are optimizing each cent: we are starting from the reality in the country and are funding projects with integrated vision – that is why we are working together with other ministries: Health, Labour and Social Protection, Education, Business Environment, Environment.”

Georgeta Gheorghe