Official Minzatu says transport infrastructure budget in 2021-2027 financial exercise will drop by 3 billion euros

he European funds that Romania will be able to use during the 2021-2027 financial exercise for the transport infrastructure will be by almost 3 billion euros smaller compared with the one in the 2014-2020 financial exercise, despite the 8 per cent growth in the budget allocated to our country, Minister for European Funds Roxana Minzatu stated on Friday.

According to her, Romania will benefit from 30.6 billion euros, but it will be able to grant approximately 6 billion euros for transport infrastructure projects.

"In the future financial exercise, 30.6 billion euros will be earmarked for Romania, although the modality we will use to grant the money on the "Better Connected Europe" objective, under which we finance the roads, depends on the percentage that the European Union established for each country and, indeed, seeing how things are today, we will have around six billions euros for infrastructure. The Ministry of Transport told us that he will need around 3 billion euros for the ongoing projects, which means that we will have around 3-3.5 billion euros left for the new investments we are preparing the documentation for right now and for which we will start to spend money in the future exercise (...) It's also true that we received more money this time, but the percentage is applied to all member states, in the context in which the Western states, which are also the greatest contributors at European level, no longer have such objectives, they are no longer interested in investing in the transport infrastructure. For they already have roads," said Minzatu.

The Minister of European Funds pointed out that the need for investments in the next ten years "in the road, railway and subway infrastructures in Romania" requires around 35 billion euros.

"Available are those European funds corresponding to the current exercise, plus the money to be allocated under the 2021-2027 exercise. This is the reality. Even if we spend the entire amount of 30.6 billion euros, we still won't be able to cover all the investments. The European money only cover a part of the investments," added Roxana Minzatu.