A situation of the Agency for Regional Development (ADR) West indicates that, within the Regional Operational Program (ROP) 2014-2020, the four component counties of the body (Timiș, Arad, Caraș-Severin and Hunedoara) had a budget allocation of 643 million euros, negotiated in the first phase.
Due to the fact that the projects were written and submitted in a timely manner, the amounts were supplemented up to 920 million euros, resulting in an absorption of 143% for the entire budget year.
“Practically, the allocation also increased and there was also an overcontracting that the government assumed from the national budget. In total, in the 17 years since entering the EU, if we take it that way, we have absorbed over 2 billion euros net, money that we have invested in one form or another in the region”, explained Sorin Maxim , director of ADR West, for Libertatea.
The statistical figures also show that, through the 2014-2020 ROP, investments were made in 874 projects in the region. Timiș County attracted 278 million euros, 270 million euros went to Hunedoara, 186 million euros to Arad, and 185 million euros to Caraș-Severin.
Schools, hospitals, trams, buses, cycle paths
The 920 million euros from the 2014-2020 ROP have been allocated to both public and private projects. For example, in the field of infrastructure and transport, almost 400 kilometers of road were rebuilt, of which 323 kilometers of county roads, and over 200 electric buses and trams were bought, and bicycle paths were built over a length of 40 Kilometres.
Also with European money, 17 specialized outpatient clinics and 17 emergency reception units were modernized and equipped. 158 ambulances have arrived in the four counties in the west of the country bought with European funds.
86 schools were repaired, equipped or built from scratch, through the 2014-2020 ROP. More than 10,000 homes (apartments) and 49 public buildings were thermally insulated for lower heat consumption.
The balance sheet presented by ADR Vest also shows that 25 monuments were rehabilitated, and in the private sector, 470 companies benefited from financing, creating more than 1,650 new jobs. The statistics indicate that the funds allocated to the west of the country after the entry into the EU have been spent in full and it has been possible to attract additional funding.
If in big cities, such as Timișoara, the impact of European money is visible and has produced important changes, in medium-sized towns in the region, the projects implemented in the last quarter of a century have changed the life of the community.
Sorin Maxim, director of ADR West, claims that there are areas where the amounts from European funds are 40 times higher than the local budget dedicated to investments.
An example of absorbing the money allocated by the EU for modernization is Hunedoara. Among other things, the Corvinor Castle was restored in the city, and the objective became a point of attraction for hundreds of thousands of tourists annually.
“The value produced by the castle, directly and indirectly, is greater than the fees and taxes collected from the citizens for a year. Around the castle, beautiful things began to develop, houses began to be renovated, guesthouses, hotels began to grow. This is the purpose of the revitalization of such a heritage building. We fix it because it becomes an anchor for development”, Sorin Maxim believes.
“It went from a quantitative approach to a qualitative one”
If at the beginning the projects were simpler in terms of the conditions imposed, with the increase of the amounts the complexity of the requirements also increased.
“From program to program, the European Commission has set more and more conditions regarding the environment, the circular economy, and the social impact. This thing complicated the lives of the beneficiaries a little, but I think that this was also an evolution”, explains the director of ADR West.
One of the requirements of the European Commission is that the projects benefiting from non-reimbursable funds be “greener” and as digitized as possible. “And in the private sector, there have started to be innovation and digitization components, which the Commission wants reflected in the projects. Instead, the biggest changes are in the public area. It moved from a quantitative approach to a qualitative one. We no longer only measure what is called kilometers or square meters, we also measure an impact of the results in the social and environmental area”, details the head of ADR West.
Concretely, when modernizing a school, it’s not just about how the building looks. It must be taken into account how efficient the building is from an energy point of view, but also how well trained the teachers are.
“All the requirements show that we have reached a level of development and we are aligning ourselves with European standards. The privates adapted quite quickly to the needs. On the other hand, I think that there is still a lot of work to be done in the public area”, claims Maxim.
According to the director of ADR West, town halls, county councils and other state institutions, plus the Romanian Government are the biggest investors at the moment, thanks to the sums they pump into the local economy year after year.
Big problems in the public area
“This preparation made by the public system is still far from what it should be. I think it should be a more predictable mechanism and better anchored to the needs of the times, which prepares public resources constantly. This thing does not happen. In other words, it is clear that the level of training in the public sector has decreased and a great deal of reliance is placed on the consulting sector, which unfortunately is not regulated either. No one can guarantee that a consulting project written by someone has a minimum quality”, Sorin Maxim points out.
The director of ADR Vest claims that a problem in Romania at the moment is that “any company that appears on the market and calls itself a European funds company and has an employee who signs himself as a European funds expert has this right without anyone challenging them or to validate its quality”.
“This creates big problems for us in the market because the beneficiaries, whether they bid or make direct purchases, take all kinds of companies, and in the long term this is not a very good thing because in this way competence is drained from the area public to private and the authorities are not left with a minimal capacity to be able to make decisions, at least at a strategic level”, warned the director of ADR West.
The successful model from Timiș
Sorin Maxim believes that the solution for public institutions to have people truly prepared to attract European funds is to establish a staff training body, in the first stage, and to create structures at the level of the institutions capable of verifying the projects drawn up by private companies of consultancy.
Sorin Maxim also has an example of success in this regard: the water and sewer company Aquatim (subordinate to the Timișoara Local Council), which attracted European funds of over 400 million euros.
“Aquatim has a department that writes the projects, including the technical part, and the results are visible. I think we should have a regional institution that can write some of these design themes, and some of the more complex components can be outsourced. But, not having a guarantee of quality, obviously in the end there are always contract changes, adjustments, changes in solutions, and that takes time and money. I think that here, in the training area, there is a lot to do”, says Sorin Maxim.
The great gain brought to entrepreneurs by European funds
Giana Bălan has 17 years of experience in business consulting, specializing in accessing non-refundable funds in the private sector.
The expert explained for Libertatea that, for Romanian businessmen, accessing European funds was a huge gain. And this, Bălan claims, does not primarily consist in the possibility of purchasing new equipment. “The real gain, beyond the fact that we could make more qualitative investments than we could have done with our money, comes from the area of discipline and entrepreneurial education. Being forced to think their projects in perspective, make some long-term development strategies, draw up a business plan and stick to it or if they fail to stick to take action on the fly to notify the funder , the entrepreneurs educated themselves and disciplined themselves financially a lot”, explains Giana Bălan.
The consultancy says that entrepreneurs have learned to analyze their businesses more deeply, work with specialists and turn to experts. “On European projects, it is often necessary to collaborate with several experts, and in this way you, as an entrepreneur, could see that there is a specialist in finance, environmental protection, technology, energy efficiency. In the long term, it can be a win because entrepreneurs learn to work with experts,” the specialist in consulting for attracting European funds emphasized.
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Tags: Region Romania Champion European Funds Absorption Reported
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