How much money will Romania be able to spend from PNRR? “If the Government mobilizes after the elections, the maximum it will be able to do will be to absorb the part of the grants, i.e. that half of the 28.5 billion euros”

Photo: Inquam Photos / Alberto Grosescu

Romania still has “less than two and a half years to achieve all the objectives assumed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan” – this is the warning launched in Bucharest, in March, by Celine Gauer, the European Commission responsible for the implementation of the PNRR. He also said that if Romania does not meet the assumed milestones, our country could end up in the situation of returning the money received. Tana Foarfa, expert in European affairs and executive director of Europuls (European Expertise Center), said in an interview for the Republic that “we have to take what Céline Gauer said with a grain of salt, in the sense that she raised this alert to us to tell us that there is this risk.”

“The principle of solid management consists in knowing very well how you manage that money, because if you don’t do this, it means that you weren’t sufficiently prepared and didn’t fully understand what the role of that program is,” explained Tana Foarfa .

– Céline Gauer, the general director of the operative group for recovery and resilience within the European Commission, came to Bucharest and said that there is a possibility that Romania will end up in a situation where it will return the money received so far from the PNRR if the commitments on which we assumed. What can we understand from this warning?

First, because the PNRR is made up of grants and loans, any loans we receive will actually have to be paid back. So this is a generally valid thing. Then, there is a provision that we put in place and that was negotiated in trilogues at the European level: We did not want that money to simply be given to projects that would then no longer be completed, so to they remain there forgotten and spent for nothing, because, I repeat, there are very large loans at the European level, and this money must be returned, so we must make sure that we, the ordinary citizens who pay taxes, do not return it.

We have to pay them back from the profit we make. So we, as a country, when we receive some money, we have to make sure that the investments we make with that money generate a profit from which we can cover that loan. If you obviously don’t build roads that allow you to develop an infrastructure, if you don’t build hospitals as well, if you don’t build facilities so that Romanians can choose to take advantage of them, then we’re talking about lost investments. And then, we said this: well, if in 2026, you, as a country, end up in a situation where you have made some investments, some of them are, let’s say, close to completion, some of them are not.

Basically, at that moment you did not fulfill the objectives of the PNRR, because the PNRR had the objective, if we look at the European framework, to be able to recover the gaps and go in parallel with the reforms and investments. And to do that there is that calendar of targets and milestones. And we do have a provision that if it is found that the funds were not properly spent, and that not only were they not properly spent, but were made and used contrary to the principles of the PNRR, then there is indeed a risk that that country to be told that it has not managed funds well. And as a result of this verdict, the European Commission can come and say: “we need the money back”. After all, there is a situation that can be found in the everyday life of citizens: you go and get a loan from a bank because you want to do a business, to develop. But things don’t work out for you. However, you still have to pay them back.

The principle of sound management is to know very well how you manage that money, because if it does not, it means that you have not been sufficiently prepared and you have not fully understood what the role of that program is.

We have to take what Céline Gauer said with a grain of salt, in that she raised this alert to us to tell us that there is this risk. That is, he wanted to make us as citizens, as civil society and as the business environment, to be very vigilant about what the Government is doing.

I explained what is the mechanism by which we could end up giving the money back, but obviously when they will analyze and find out what were the targets, what were the milestones, what was fulfilled and what was not, it will be held account and what is the economic growth of the country, what is the purchasing power, because no one at the European level will want to end up in a situation where all the pressure is put on the citizens because the government made bad expenses and a management non-performing.

At the EU level, the pressure is anyway put on the citizens, if we look at that there are 670 billion euros which were borrowed. That money in time will have to be given and returned and will be returned not only by us, so from the taxes that we pay, but also by our children and our grandchildren, that, no, it is quite a large amount that will span several years, meaning they have to be returned sometime after 2050. So basically we have to make sure at this point that we know where this PNRR money goes, that is, to have a very clear traceability of the funds and based on them to realize whether the direction in which they are going is a good one or as good as possible in the context of our management. In order not to be ultra ambitious, we have to accept that we have to work with what we have.

If we see that there are clear signals that the money will be lost, so it ends up in a black hole, these things must be reported to the European Commission, so that’s how we should interpret the risk that Céline Gauer pointed out.

Romania has so far benefited from payments worth 9 billion euros, and a new payment request, the third, is delayed. Our country has been allocated a total of almost 29 billion euros of funds through the PNRR.

“What I think, pragmatically, is that if the government mobilizes after the elections to be able to bring the PNRR up to date by 2026, the maximum it will be able to do will be to absorb the part of the grants, that is, that half from the 28.5 billion euros. On the lending side, I would be very happy if we could access that as well, but this will also bring with it a greater responsibility on the part of the government to understand that we are borrowing, meaning that money has to be paid back, and that it means that when we invest, we have to think that we have to extract a certain profit from those investments so that we can give that money back”, Tana Foarfa also declared for Republica.

Follow the Republic on Google News

Follow the Republic on Threads

Follow Republica on the WhatsApp channel