Bridging gaps between towns and villages in Romania

Hundreds of village mayors in Romania got together in Bucharest to address issues related to local budgets, projects and funding sources.

Corina Cristea, 19.02.2019, 14:14

In Bucharest,
the 22nd General Assembly of the Communes’ Association in Romania
brought together hundreds of mayors. Debates focused on the need for Romanian
communes and villages to be modernized. However, not all mayors make efforts to
attract European or government funds. The gap between villages and towns will
further be bridged significantly until 2020 through government investment -
that is the promise Prime Minister Viorica Dancila made at the meeting with the
mayors. We want to do away with muddy streets in our villages and communes, we
want to create jobs because not only utilities are a problem in Romania, but also the fact that a lot of
young people leave their villages, Viorica Dancila said. She underscored that
an important objective of the government was the bridging of gaps between
various regions.

Furthermore, the Prime Minister told the mayors attending the
meeting that Romania backed the Common Agricultural Policy, that is the
agricultural policy of the European Union. Viorica Dancila:

We
back a simplified policy aimed at doing away with bureaucracy and at avoiding
rural development overlapping other measures taken as part of the Common
Agricultural Policy, at establishing the necessary framework for introducing
the results of research and innovation in agriculture, as well as a more
flexible approach to funding opportunities, through the transfer between
intervention types, both from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural
Development and the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund.

Education
Minister Ecaterina Andronescu told the mayors attending the meeting that
schools in the villages of present Romania were nothing like those 20 years
ago, but that there were still problems that needed solving:

In
Romania there are still 1460 schools whose toilet facilities are in the yard.
This year we are going to solve this problem because the Ministry of Education
will earmark 65 million lei to that end. We will allocate a large sum of money
to give free school supplies to all children in the countryside.

Health Minister
Sorina Pintea spoke about family medicine and stand by services. She said that
there were still many communes in Romania whose mayors should set up such
services. In turn, the Minister of European Funds, Rovana Plumb, made it clear that
there were no more delays in the absorption of European funds, Romania having
reached the European average.