The Government has adopted the decision transposing into national legislation the Council Implementing Decision approving the revised National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), meaning that as of today the official amounts are updated in Romania's budget to ensure full clarity and predictability in implementing the plan, Minister of Investments and European Projects Dragos Pislaru said on Thursday.
"In terms of the NRRP, the Government has adopted today the decision transposing into national law the Council Implementing Decision approving the revised plan. As I mentioned last week, we have the final approval from the European Union, and now we have the official reallocation of amounts in Romania's budget so that everything is extremely clear and predictable regarding NRRP implementation," the minister said at the press briefing following the Cabinet meeting.
Pislariu underlined that, having secured the "clarity and predictability so badly needed", the Government now has the necessary funds, in partnership with the Ministry of Finance, "to ensure that we implement all required projects by 31 August".
He also announced the launch of a platform on the website of the Ministry of Investments and European Projects (MIPE), listing all NRRP projects, their implementation status and the amounts invested.
"It is a great pleasure for me to publicly launch today a platform - the NRRP dashboard, which you can already find on the website of the Ministry of Investments and European Projects. This is a clear first for the Romanian administration and, notably, it has been recognised by the European Commission itself as a good practice at European level. So, from a blocked NRRP, we have now moved to a genuine good practice in terms of presentation, transparency and management of the plan," the minister said.
According to him, Romania has spent almost RON 9 billion from the NRRP and by the end of the year will reach around 10 billion, roughly half of the revised allocation.
"We can see the new allocation of EUR 21.4 billion and where we stand today. We are close to 9 billion in expenditure. By year-end I believe we will reach around 10, meaning roughly half of the NRRP already paid for ongoing projects. Receipts amount to 10.7 billion. And, very importantly, we are introducing a map showing how many projects we are talking about: more than 21,000 projects - 21,262 - and you can view the value of each one. What I would like to show you, because I have said that the country is a building site, that things are happening, that Romania does not even need another stimulus programme beyond properly implementing what we already have with existing EU funds," he stated.
The map also shows the distribution of NRRP projects by county and by administrative-territorial unit, as well as the counties that have absorbed the largest amounts.
"As you can see, Cluj, Timis, Iasi, Constanta and, of course, Bucharest stand out clearly, as Bucharest also includes the national projects. We can look at any county - for example Constanta - and see all the localities where NRRP projects are being implemented. If we select a locality, Murfatlar, we can see its NRRP projects. Importantly, these are open data. You can download the datasets in three formats - Excel, JSON and CSV - to analyse them, compare them and see how implementation is progressing and with what budget. And in Murfatlar we see thermal rehabilitation of apartment blocks, a nursery, energy efficiency works at the secondary school, afforestation, housing for young people, smart city systems, intelligent urban management systems, the project 'Your Chance at Murfatlar Theoretical High School', school furniture, and more. Several of these projects have already been completed. The school dropout reduction plan is linked to the larger 'Educated Romania' project. Do not forget we have around EUR 2.4 billion for education, including vocational and technical training and support for private companies. Here is, for example, the digitalisation of the company Zack Com Impex SRL," the MIPE head noted.
He added that a similar dashboard will also be developed for Cohesion Policy projects, with a dedicated presentation to be held at the Ministry of Investments and European Projects (MIPE).
"What I consider important is that once we have access to these tools, we must understand that there is a double benefit on the NRRP side. First, there is the benefit of transparency, and I believe we are now setting a new standard in the Romanian administration when it comes to making European projects transparent. Naturally, as you would expect, we have the same thing for Cohesion, and I will hold a presentation at the Ministry of Investments and European Projects, to which I will invite you, to discuss the Cohesion projects. There we will have even more data, because we have an integrated data-management system. In the NRRP, the information is somewhat more limited because - and I want to say this firmly and very clearly - unfortunately, when this Government took office and when I assumed the MIPE portfolio, there was no clear list of NRRP projects, no indexed record of these projects, no monitoring of payments or physical progress at national level. It took us more than two and a half months to gather this information. (...) The most patriotic thing one can do is to implement the funds provided by the European Union for the benefit of Romanians in every corner of the country, as I have just shown," he stated.
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