Policy memo, no.7, January 2010
Author: Ioana Morovan
With almost 600 million Euros spent out of 5.6 billion Euros available from the European Union for the period 2007-2009, Romania didn’t perform too well in attracting structural funds.
Furthermore, the performance appears to be even lower given that the European Union has paid Romania about 2 billion Euros in advance to ensure the start-up of programs/projects. Clearly, the vast majority of this money has not yet been used, as this depends on an increase in the pace of approval, contracting and implementation of projects.
This pace is still slow, the main reasons being bureaucratic ballast, inadequate staffing of relevant authorities and a shortage of independent evaluators. Over all these, the economic crisis has also impeded the applicants and has challenged theirs and the authorities ability to adapt and find solutions.
A series of improvements and simplifications of the procedures were made and these are analyzed in this report. However, they are not enough to make a significant difference in the dynamics of project approval and reimbursement. The report is available only in Romanian, here.