The Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism (MEDAT) has set itself the goal of finalizing Romania's digital transformation strategy in a short period of time and submitting it to public consultation, relevant interim minister Irineu Darau said on Wednesday, in a six-month review conference.
"Debureaucratization and digitalization must be done for less bureaucracy and more time for people, because digitalization is not an end in itself or a collection of new platforms. It only makes sense when it reduces bureaucracy, simplifies the relationship with the state and allows people and companies to spend their time on what really matters," the minister said.
According to Darau, in the first six months, several legislative bills and important investments in the field of digitalization were unlocked.
Thus, the ministry finalized the implementing rules for the electronic signature legislation, removed bottlenecks affecting the implementation of the government cloud and is in the final phase of developing a virtual assistant (chatbot) for Start-Up Nation, which will take over approximately 70% of the questions received by the ministry.
At the same time, all investments managed by the ministry through the NRRP were maintained in implementation, without eliminating any project, following negotiations with the European Commission.
In 2026, the ministry has already made payments of over 515 million lei.
At the European level, MEDAT has proposed to move from a passive to an active approach, by directly involving itself in negotiations on European competitiveness, critical raw materials, artificial intelligence and strategic industrial projects. At the same time, new permanent mechanisms for consultation with the private sector and experts from outside the administration have been created, so that economic and digitalization policies can be built together with those directly involved.
