European Commission reimburses Romania over 1.734bn euro in 2019

The European Commission has reimbursed Romania this year 1.734 billion euro, this amount representing the funds used from the state budget for the granting of the direct payments schemes for the year 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR) announced on Wednesday.

"On 5 March, 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development received 75.8 million euro in the account opened with the National Bank of Romania, representing the reimbursement from the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) of the amounts used from the budget by APIA from 1 January 2019 to 31 January 2019 for the granting of direct payment schemes corresponding to application year 2018. This amount adds to the reimbursements made by the European Commission from the EAGF in January 2019 (807.5 million euro) and February 2019 (452.86 million euro), for APIA payments under the direct payment schemes corresponding to the application year 2018, and the February 2019 reimbursement of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) in the amount of 297.87 million euro for the payments made by AFIR in the fourth quarter of 2018. Cumulating the financial data from above, the sums that MADR received from the European Commission between 1 January and 6 March 2019 amount to 1.734 billion euro," reads a MADR release for AGERPRES.

The next reimbursement by the European Commission on the basis of the statement of expenditures corresponding to APIA payments in February 2019 will be made during the first two working days of April, the amounts to be thus reimbursed amounting to 124.47 million euro.

Overall, in the period 2017-2019, Romania received more than 7.820 billion euro from the European Union.

The Ministry of Agriculture proposed for 2019 an uptake target from EAGF and EAFRD of 3 billion euro. "After the amount collected in April 2019, the percentage of uptake relative to the proposed target will reach 61.94pct," the quoted source informs.