Romania reportedly gets partial Resilience Facility disbursement

The European Commission will reportedly disburse only part of the EUR 2.3 bln Resilience Facility money to Romania, with EUR 1.1 bln temporarily retained for failure to meet a number of targets and milestones, according to sources familiar with the matter consulted by Economedia.ro.

The part of the money retained until all targets are met seems disproportionate, however, compared to the number of targets met.

In principle, the Romanian government has six months to meet the outstanding milestones and receive the rest of the money.

The Romanian government confirmed that it met only 68 of the 74 milestones related to the third disbursement, according to Economedia.ro. Six milestones are considered partially or completely unfulfilled.

According to Economedia.ro, a key unfulfilled milestone is the operationalization of the agency charged with supervising the state companies.

Another key unfulfilled milestone is the lowering of the threshold for micro-enterprises, where prime minister Marcel Ciolacu said that a political decision must be made.

Another controversial milestone is that regarding the appointments of the heads of energy companies. Most likely, another unfulfilled milestone is the one regarding the Cluj-Napoca subway project, for which Economedia.ro previously reported that EUR 300 mln may be temporarily suspended.

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