Romania's Ministry of Investments and European Projects will begin negotiations with the European Commission for the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) in the current form, prime minister Florin Citu announced after the Government meeting on April 7.

"We had a very good discussion about PNRR, the memorandum mandating the Ministry of European Investments and Projects to negotiate the form we have today of PNRR was approved," PM Citu announced briefly, quoted by Agerpres.

However, the volume of public debates about the PNRR, published on March 19, was virtually null.

The first form of the PNRR, drafted by the former Liberal Government last fall but scrapped by the current reformist (USR-PLUS) minister of investments Cristian Ghinea, was initially launched by the President and Government officials in detail.

The second version, drafted by the Government of PM Florin Citu, was published on March 19 "for public consultation" - stirring not much public debate but rather protests from the Social Democratic opposition party PSD, which urged the Government to debate the Recovery and Resilience Plan in Parliament.

On March 31, the Government amended the ordinance 155/2020 "on some measures for the elaboration of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR)," - mainly replacing the term "relaunch" with the more appropriate term "recovery," according to G4media.ro.

"Given the urgency in finalizing and assuming at national level the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and taking into account the very short time until the deadline, it is necessary to mandate the Ministry of Investment and European Projects to conduct negotiation procedures with the European Commission, to approve the PNRR," according to the substantiation note attached to the amendments to ordinance 155/2020.

The current form of the PNRR includes investments worth EUR over 41 bln that Romania wants to finance with EU funds, while the EU funds allotted to Romania for this plan are around EUR 30 bln.

(Photo: Pixabay)

andrei@romania-insider.com