Renegotiation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan

The interim government in Bucharest is making efforts to avoid losing huge sums of European funds.

Daniela Budu, 09.05.2025, 14:00

The Romanian government adopted, on Thursday, in the first meeting chaired by the interim Prime Minister Cătălin Predoiu, the memorandum that allows for the renegotiation with the European Executive of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNNR). The Minister of European Projects, Marcel Boloş, now has the legislative framework to renegotiate amendments to the PNRR. The main goal is to not lose any money from the grant of over 13 billion euros that Bucharest is to receive. To achieve this, the Romanian executive must ensure that it has the necessary time for all the investment targets it has committed to to be implemented by August 31 next year. The Minister of European Projects, Marcel Boloş:

“Why is it important to continue amending the National Recovery and Resilience Plan? In order to have the physical time necessary until August 31, 2026, to complete the amendments that will be negotiated and approved by the European Commission. And within these amendments, the main objective that we are pursuing is to absorb the grant worth 13.1 billion euros in its entirety, without penalties. This means making sure that the investment targets are achieved and implemented by August 31, 2026.

According to the minister, the second goal of the renegotiation of the PNRR is to advance 55 targets and milestones from payment request number 4 and to increase its value. Marcel Boloş:

“To increase the value of the payment request, which, as we know, was initially 2.7 billion euros, so to increase it by three billion euros, so that in the end its value reaches around 5.7 billion euros.”

At the same time, the minister explained, “we know that certain investment objectives have had quite low physical and financial progress. We are trying to replace them with investment objectives that correspond to the objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and were financed from state budget sources,” he added. In the coming period, Marcel Boloș also announced, Romania is going to access important European funds, namely 1.3 billion euros from payment request number 3, which it should receive by the end of this month.

Marcel Boloș stated that the renegotiation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan with the European Executive is extremely complex, but voiced hope that there will be a final decision on this subject by the ECOFIN Council in July. According to the European Commission, so far, the milestones in the PNRR that Romania has not fulfilled concern special pensions, investments for the modernization of the railway infrastructure and the development of the underground transport network in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca (north-west), as well as reforms for performance-based management in the field of transport, improving the corporate governance of state-owned energy companies and the operationalization of corporate governance policies for state-owned enterprises. (MI)