Commissioner: Romania should focus on spending EU funds

The Romanian authorities should mainly focus on spending the money offered by the European Union through projects and only then think about public-private partnerships, according to Corina Cretu, the European Commissioner for Regional Policy. “We have billions of euros waiting in Brussels,” Cretu said on Friday, October 19, local News.ro reported. She added that she has done her duty of warning member-states, not only Romania, about increasing their EU fund absorption rate. “I have never placed the responsibility for the delays only on governments. But, sometimes I’m exasperated, not only in Romania, of the slow pace, especially in the transport infrastructure sector,” Cretu said. She also referred to the sanctions decided against Romania by the European Court of Justice on environment issues saying that she warned Romanian prime minister Viorica Dancila about this but no significant progress has been made in addressing these issues. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Thursday, October 18, that Romania failed to comply with the Directive 1999/31/CE on landfills. A total of 68 illegal landfills are still open in Romania although the country should have had them closed and rehabilitated by mid-July 2009. European Commissioner says she won’t take any more insults from Romanian Govt. editor@romania-insider.com