Romania risks losing over 40% of Resilience Facility money

Romania risks not absorbing EUR 11.9 billion of the loans and grants allocated from the European Union’s budget under the Resilience Facility (RRF) due to delayed projects, according to data disclosed on May 29 by the minister of investments and European projects, Marcel Boloş, News.ro reported. This would be over 40% of the total EUR 28 billion RRF budget for Romania.

The Romanian authorities have identified projects that are delayed, specifically those with an implementation rate below 50%, totaling EUR 8 billion. The European Commission spotted other delayed projects in the amount of EUR 3.9 billion.

Romania focuses on securing the disbursement of the EUR 13.1 billion under the grant component of RRF, minister Bolos explained. He implied that the renegotiation of the national resilience plan PNRR could help with this by the replacement of delayed projects (under RRF) with other projects financed from the national budget (under the Anghel Saligny scheme) with the same restrictions.

Under the initial assumptions drafted at the moment RRF was designed, Romania defined three scenarios to estimate the impact of the facility on the country’s GDP – but all three scenarios included 100% absorption of grants.

The impact over the six years of implementation, calculated under the assumption of 100% absorption of grants and loans, was 5.4%. Without the loan component, the impact was estimated at 3.4%.

(Photo source: Inquam Photos/Sabin Cirstoveanu)