Financiarul

Over 100 non-governmental organizations, trade union structures and employers’ associations directed the Prime Minister’s attention to the fact that Romania ran the risk of losing a large part of those approximately 30 billion euros, in non-reimbursable funds, because of the lack of efficiency on the part of the Government and the authorities responsible for the funds management.

The NGOs together with the trade unions and the employers’ associations take notice, through an open letter sent to Prime Minister Emil Boc on Tuesday, of the serious issues the structural funds applicants and the financing beneficiaries are confronted with: the large time span between the financing claim submission date and the date an answer is given, as well as the long periods of time related to contracting procedures.

‘Extremely long delays in reimbursing the tranches of money spent by those who have been implementing projects (in some cases, although the maximum duration stipulated in the agreements is 45 days, the reimbursement was not provided for four months since the reimbursement claim submission);
the VAT recovery impossibility, although this is a legally-binding requirement, leading to the situation in which people working on projects have to contribute tens or even hundreds of thousands of euros to the projects budgets, taking into account that no bank in Romania grants credits for such an undertaking;

poor communication between the managing authorities and the intermediary bodies, on one hand, and the structural instruments financing applicants, on the other hand,’ these are other problems signalled in the open letter.
The signatories of the letter sent the Prime Minister the notification that the Government ‘takes measures only at declaratory level,’ while the managing authorities, administering operational programmes, ‘are confronted with serious staff-related and red tape issues.’

Also, the signatories of the letter suggest that the following types of measures adopted by the Government would eliminate the risk of blocking the structural funds accession: increasing the number of employees in charge of structural funds management at the level imposed by the activity’s volume and complexity level within the managing authorities, establishing clear procedures for VAT recovery and eliminating the red tape procedures not requested by the European Union.

‘At discourse level, the members of the Government have lately shown more concern for spending the European money. We actually would like to see that this concern is translated into practice. One thing is extremely clear for everybody: the measures the Government needs to take are extremely urgent,’ said Oana Preda, executive director of Resources Centre for Public Participation.