Romania has approved 4,200 projects to attract EU funding worth EUR 9.7 billion in total, out of which 2,500 projects have already been signed, according to the Romanian Finance Ministry. The approved projects total EUR 5.5 billion. The number of submitted filed for receiving EU funds was of 16,500, which would have required funding of EUR 36 billion, according to Mediafax newswire quoting Fin Min sources. So far EUR 800 million of payments have been made for the contracts which were signed. The statistics doesn't include agriculture funds. Many of the ongoing projects with EU funds are still blocked in court, after bidders have challenged the bid results.