Romania has not lost money so far in the area of grants from the PNRR, but there is this risk in the payment request 3 because previous governments did not take the appropriate measures on time, said on Tuesday the Minister of Investments and European Funds, Dragos Pislaru.
"At this moment I am glad to be able to clarify these things with the PNRR. In the PNRR you have two components. You have a grant component, which is non-refundable, and a loan component. I will ask you in the media area to all agree that losing money means losing money from the non-refundable amount. So, from the money that is given as a grant by the European Commission. Reducing the area that you borrow because you want to finance it differently, from my point of view is not a loss, unless at most you can think of a lower interest rate, let's say, that you have with the European Commission, than the usual financing rate. And now we come back: so far, not a single leu has been lost from the grant area. On the payment request 3, it will be the first time that that request was suspended in May 2025, because the government did not do its job, the governments "In the previous years, we will lose the first money on grants, because in the field of transport, the appointments were not made as we discussed here, in the field of energy, not all the appointments were made as we discussed here, and in the field of AMEPIP, things were not done on time as they should have been done," Dragos Pislaru stated, in a press conference organized by the Agency for Monitoring and Evaluation of Public Enterprises' Performance (AMEPIP) at Victoria Palace, agerpres reports.
According to the minister, the areas in which the mentioned problems were registered were at that time under the coordination of the initiators of the censure motion submitted to Parliament on Tuesday.
"I will kindly ask you to do your analysis, but honestly, who coordinated Transport, Energy and AMEPIP. And if you do this and come to the conclusion that 100% of this control was exercised by those who are now accusing us, then I will ask you to send them back the message that if it is the first amount of grant money that will be lost, it will be strictly due to their irresponsibility. I had 5 reports in Government meetings regarding the fact that they are not respecting that before November 28, which was the deadline. So, any kind of thing that comes to me from the PNRR that money is being lost from that area, I will kindly ask you to take it and take it to where they did not fulfill it. To be very explicit. Regarding the rest of the grant money that is my direct responsibility and that of the Ilie Bolojan government, until we lose a single leu in "in addition to what was lost from application 3, as a result of what I told you, one euro to be more explicit (...) I will ask you to go by what I tell you: we will not lose money from the grant. And now you will say: 'sir, you are too optimistic'. Of course. Obviously, if the Government completely collapses and we will have no possibility to do anything in the coming period, then we will know why we are losing money," explained Dragos Pislaru.
The Minister of Investments and European Funds also mentioned the strategy he intends to apply so that Romania does not lose money from the PNRR.
"But I have a plan that I discussed with the president, I discussed with the prime minister. It is a plan that even the parties that withdrew from the coalition support as an idea, as a principle. We now have a surgical possibility that we pre-negotiated with the European Commission, that in the grant area, if we have any investment at risk, we can replace it with things that we have already finalized on the loan component. If we achieve that and we have the governmental capacity to make these changes, which take time, and we only have one month to do this, so before May 31, together with our colleagues from Finance and the prime minister - and we have a first meeting on Thursday morning at 9:00 on this subject - we can save the entire grant component further, and Romania can take all the money on the grant side," declared Dragos Pislaru.
Regarding the loans, he stated that the decision will depend on an analysis of costs and possible penalties.
"On the loan side, we will do an analysis, let's see if the non-completion penalty is higher than the actual amount we should take, then we probably give it up, if we have the opposite, we keep it, and then anyway we will lose some marginal amounts on the loan area, which are not a problem. So, it doesn't hurt me at all that I borrow less, there is really a difference in borrowing cost between the money I borrow from the Commission and the money I would borrow on the market, but they are marginal amounts," Pislaru also pointed out.
He reiterated that giving up the money that Romania can borrow through the PNRR does not mean that it is a loss.
"We didn't lose them, they don't go into deficit, on the contrary, they are money that we can really borrow from other sources at any time. On the grant side, the first money will be lost on those areas that I told you about and I'm telling you today that if I'm left to do my job, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan is left to support these things, the president is left to mediate and ensure a political agreement on these things on the PNRR, we finish them and we get the money too," Dragos Pîslaru also stated.
