The European Commission has positively evaluated the second payment request sent by Romania within the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, in the amount of 3.22 billion euros, informs the Ministry of European Investments and Projects (MIPE).
At the end of last year, Romania submitted to the Commission the second payment request related to the PNRR, which included 49 milestones and 2 targets. After analyzing the information sent by the Romanian authorities, the Commission considered 47 benchmarks to have been met satisfactorily.
“After deducting the pre-financing already collected by our country, the payment amounts are 2.8 billion euros, of which 1.86 billion euros is the grant part and 0.94 billion euros is the loan part. As a result of the non-fulfillment satisfactory of 2 milestones, Romania will collect 53.36 million euros less in the account of the support component in the form of a loan of the PNRR, having another 6 months at its disposal to return with evidence that the milestones have been satisfactorily met for this amount as well,” it is stated in the press release, according to Agerpres.
In accordance with the regulations on the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, published by the Commission in February 2023, Member States are reimbursed the funds related to the met targets and milestones contained in a payment request and have additional time to complete the outstanding milestones.
“Good news, of course, we are waiting for this money to be able to take the pressure off the financing costs, but we still have a lot of work to do. We need to accelerate the fulfillment of milestones and targets, recover the delays and return to the originally assumed schedule. Today we had a first meeting with all the reform coordinators and assured them that MIPE will provide all the necessary tools and support to recover the pace of implementation. It is a team work, all ministers understand this and we will make sure to touch each other the goal within the deadlines set in front of our partners,” said Adrian Câciu, Minister of European Investments and Projects.
The second payment request is in the amount of 3.22 billion euros, of which 2.14 billion euros represent non-reimbursable financial support and 1.08 billion euros – support in the form of a loan, amounts that also include pre-financing in the amount of 13%.
Next, the European Commission will send the assessment of payment request no. 2 of Romania, according to the procedure of the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC), to be approved.
According to the cited source, the first payment request from the PNRR was reimbursed to Romania in October 2022, the amount paid being 2.6 billion euros (1.8 billion euros in the form of grants and 0.8 billion euros in the form of loans ).
Romania benefits from an allocation of 29.18 billion euros for the implementation of the PNRR, of which grants worth approximately 14.24 billion euros and loans worth 14.94 billion euros. For the implementation of the PNRR, Romania has already received two pre-financing tranches with a cumulative value of approximately 3.79 billion euros, in December 2021 and in January 2022.