The financial allocation for cities from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) will go with priority for projects in the “digital” and “green” fields, said the Minister of Investments and European Projects, Cristian Ghinea.

“In other areas of the PNRR such as interventions in cities there must be more green transition. Here will be the guide I want to propose to mayors and I hope to see the Association of Municipalities to tell them: the priority for financial allocation for cities must be green and digital. I now send my public message to mayors: greenlight works on digital and green projects. They can mean a lot, they can mean bike lanes, they can mean trains, subways, they can mean smart traffic lights, and here at the smart traffic light (they) also check the green and the digital. This is not money that I or the ministry manage, it is Romania’s money that we have to use wisely (…) We now have European money, in addition to these 30 billion euro, there are also the 55 billion euro that came anyway to Romania, so let’s use them for what would be called business us usual. Let’s use the PNRR for the green transition, green and reform,” said Cristian Ghinea, at Digi 24, quoted by Agerpres.

He specified that PNRR does not currently respect the two thresholds that the European Union wants to impose, respectively at least 37% of the money to go on the green transition and at least 20% on digitalization. “Unfortunately, and I am not saying to criticize, I am saying it factually, the existing plan (PNRR n.r.) now does not respect these two thresholds, and they must be respected,” he said.

Asked what “green” means in the transport sector, he replied that the highways do not qualify, but “CFR is green”. “There are 4.5 billion euro, of which 3.5 billion are proposed for highways and another billion euros for bypasses and other roads. What I can tell you is that I will fight for these 3.5 billion euros to stay (in PNRR no.) But the problem is that you can’t fight for everything, you have to choose your battles. I propose to keep those 4.5 billion euros for highways and roads, to defend them, but given that we cannot report green there, we cannot be green without other areas too, such as interventions in cities. There must be more green transition here,” he said.