Romania must identify and draft by 2028 several projects of European scale, as special funding will be available for them in the next multiannual budget for 2028-2034, European Parliament Vice_President Victor Negrescu said in Strasbourg.

„Here I would refer, for example, to the Black Sea security hub, to the development in our country of this cyber competence centre and its transformation from a centre into an agency, to interconnections with the Republic of Moldova, with Bulgaria, with Hungary and neighbouring states, whether road links, energy links or high-speed rail,” the PSD MEP said on Wednesday during a briefing for Romanian journalists.

„We must prepare these projects, not only ideas, so that we can access the money in question,” Negrescu argued.

In this context he lamented what he called the ‘PNRR-isation’ of European funds. „From 2028 accessing European money from the national envelope will be conditional on reforms. It is now up to us to set how reforms are linked to accessing European funds,” said the MEP, who is vice president of the Party of European Socialists (PES).

He said he had discussed these matters with the European Commissioner for Budget, Piotr Serafin, to understand how these conditionalities will apply and that he had tried to offer a series of solutions.

Moreover, Negrescu explained, in the architecture presented by the European Commission there will be a decrease in the share of the European budget allocated to national envelopes from about 65% to 45%, with more funds to be managed directly by the Commission.

„I believe Romania needs to define priorities which in my view should be the following: maintaining the budget envelope of 60 billion euro for our country, which is similar to what we currently receive, and I believe that the responsible ministers should sign up to this objective. If they do not obtain 60 billion they should go home. The second objective, I believe, is that these conditionalities should offer enough flexibility so as not to block money for beneficiaries, as happens under the PNRR,” Negrescu said.

The S&D MEP argues that there should be no risk that a municipality or an NGO cannot run projects if you have a less capable minister, we cannot afford such things.

He also argued in the meeting with journalists that „the plan Romania will negotiate must include two key operational programmes, the programme for health and the programme for education, so that we can continue to fund the development of medical units and support education even though there have been shortcomings in accessing European funds due to administrative incapacity.” AGERPRES