The PNRR is currently “in danger”, more than 20 targets and benchmarks out of a total of 55 have not been met, said on Monday, MEP Dragoş Pîslaru, co-president of REPER, who requests the intervention of President Klaus Iohannis and the Government In this regard.

“The situation related to the PNRR was discussed last week and the message was quite firm: the PNRR is in a deadlock situation. I have seen reactions from the Government in which they suggest ‘a delay’ and not a blockage. At the moment the situation is like this – we have a submitted a payment tranche and in that submitted payment tranche, of the overall number of benchmarks and targets, 55, more than 20 are not met. Until the second installment is resolved, there is no question of submitting the third installment. At this moment, there is already a delay compared to the way we had initially estimated things by about three to four months,” said Pîslaru, in a press conference held at the Parliament, according to Agerpres.

According to a calculation made by him, “every day, Romania pays an opportunity cost of 533,000 euro.”

“This situation in which we are in an extremely narrow club with two or three countries that are late, while more than 20 countries in the European Union do not have any kind of delay, makes us again in the situation of which for us “it goes like that too”. (…) Regarding the PNRR, the Government cannot assume responsibility by itself, it is something that exceeds in importance only the governmental action. The PNRR is Romania’s country project. The reforms in PNRR are reforms that we should have done for more than two decades. (…) The money will not come without reforms,” said the MEP.

In REPER’s opinion, “it is more important than ever to have a societal commitment, an assumption of responsibility at the political and societal level”.

“Therefore, we ask for two essential things: we ask the President of Romania to exercise his mediation function that he has in the Romanian Constitution in order to immediately trigger an institutional structure of dialogue in society through which to invite all the pro-European political parties, the businesses, the social environment, civil society, all those who have this problem of Romania’s country project at this moment. Somehow we all have to sit and talk. The time of fiefdoms on various things, of rotary and small political games must stop! Secondly, within the framework of this dialogue, the Government must immediately create, and we request this, a national platform for recovery and resilience, a place where all the competences available to Romania, to the Government, can be used,” said the MEP

Dragoş Pîslaru added that Romania had two co-rapporteurs, two negotiators on European legislation. “None of these two, of which I am one, was called to be able to lend a helping hand, although I did these steps,” he added.