Romania will have a network of 18,000 charging stations for electric vehicles in the next 4-5 years, from funds from the Administration of the Environmental Fund (AFM) and from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), the minister of the Environment, Tanczos Barna, said on Thursday, quoted by Agerpres.

He said that AFM will launch in a maximum of two weeks the program through which local administrations can access money for charging stations.

“The charging station program will be launched in a maximum of two weeks. We have approved the guide and it will probably be published this week or next in the Official Gazette. We need to build this charging infrastructure that is well developed in Western Europe. We will fund over 2,000 charging stations for the administrative-territorial units, PNRR also comes with over 15,000 stations and in four or five years we will reach 18,000 charging stations in Romania from these funds,” said the minister.

With the development of these stations, the interest of people to buy electric cars will increase, Tanczos considers.

He pointed out that state aid is also being prepared to change the car fleets of transport companies.

“State aid schemes are needed for companies to change their fleets. At the moment Romania is focusing on providing aid to individuals through the Rabla program, but the fleets are not yet supported, there is a discussion about a state aid, and schemes must be thought of, notified. Many of them will come through PNRR. It is not enough to support individuals, but we must provide support for companies that have dozens, hundreds of cars in cities, support for the transition to green mobility,” the government official added.