PNL (National Liberal Party) leader Nicolae Ciuca on Tuesday evening asked prime minister Marcel Ciolacu „to immediately explain how is Romania going to recover the approximately 1.1 billion euros is about to lose under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

„I’ve seen the answer from the European Commission for payment request no. 3 under PNRR. What the Commission tells us today is not at all what Mr. Ciolacu told us publicly about the risk to lose money under the PNRR. And what is even worse is that this news hits precisely when we need to know how to design the budget for 2025. So I ask Mr. Ciolacu to immediately explain what he plans to do to prevent Romania from losing the approximately 1.1 billion euros under PNRR,” Nicolae Ciuca wrote on his Facebook page.

According to the PNL leader, „the prime minister must present a very clear plan” about how the remaining milestones under the PNRR will be meet.

The minister of investments and European projects, Adrian Caciu, on Tuesday evening said that Romania will receive an important amount for the milestone that have already been met under the PNRR, while there are also other six milestone in danger of being missed.

„From the 74 milestones, we’ve met 68, while six of them are still under discussions, as we are about to get a six month suspension to meet them. The six milestones are: appointments in the energy companies, made in 2022, where it’s clear that we need to resume the procedure. The procedure has also been resumed in the case of AMEPIP [the Agency for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Performance of Public Enterprises – editor’s note], which is the agency that coordinates state companies, and the milestone is partially considered met until a new leadership is being appointed an operationalized. We also have the microenterprises related milestone. Basically, today, we have the official announcement of what we already announced several months ago that we will have – this partial payment. Of the 2.7 billion euros, Romania already cashed 649 million euros, and we will obviously receive an important amount for the milestone that we have already met, plus that suspension for the the other six milestones, as I told you,” Caciu told Digi 24 broadcasting channel.

He also said that the procedure of the Commission is to issue two decisions, one for a partial payment and the other one for a suspension of a payment, and that these are currently being discussed by the economic committees of the European Commission for a month, „with Romania being entitled to come up with a series of observations if necesssary.”

AGERPRES