The Minister of European Investments and Projects (MIPE), Mihai Alexandru Ghigiu, claims that, of the 6.4 billion euros from the PNRR that Romania has to attract in the next period, 3 billion euros are expected to be collected by the end of this year, while another 3.4 billion euros would go into a “suspension” zone.
“Romania, after the three renegotiations, remained at an amount of 20.1 billion euros, granted in the PNRR up to this moment. Romania attracted 13.7 billion euros, which means that somewhere around 6.4 billion euros should be attracted through the last two requests submitted, reimbursement request 5 and 6. Unfortunately, the situation at this moment is far from extremely optimistic, we estimate – and I insist on this word – that, according to the Commission’s analysis, Romania will probably collect in a first phase around 3 billion euros, out of the 6.4 billion euros in grants and loans, we estimate that – from our internal estimates and the discussions we had with colleagues from the EC – that we will collect 3 billion euros, which means that 3.4 billion euros will go into a suspension zone, so to speak, because, starting from August 31, we no longer have the situation we had had it for the other four requests for reimbursement”, said Mihai Alexandru Ghigiu, the Minister of European Funds, in a press conference on Wednesday, according to News.ro.
He says that Romania will send revised documents to the European Commission by Friday, November 6, in order to convince the officials in Brussels of meeting the targets.
On November 20, the EC will decide which milestones Romania has met or partially met and the related amounts that will be received by the end of the year, with our country having two months to come up with additional explanations, so that part of the suspended amounts can be drawn in the spring of 2027.
“We expect that on November 20 the European Commission will decide which are the benchmarks fulfilled by Romania or which are the milestones partially fulfilled by Romania and the related amounts, respectively the related corrections and to receive these amounts by the end of 2026,” the minister said.
Ghigiu states that there are milestones with problems both on request 5 for reimbursement (which involves an amount of 2.08 billion euros), but also on request 6 (4.35 billion euros).
“For request 5 we have six milestones with problems, and for request 6, one of the biggest requests that Romania has submitted, first of all because many reforms, targets were postponed until the end of the PNRR, practically we have reached the situation where we have 104 milestones and targets in request 6 and of them 32 are at risk of receiving penalties or some of them risk of not receiving any amount related to the respective request”, stated the minister.
