Romania and European Funds
EU Commissioner Corina Cretu gave an interview to Radio Romania on Romania's future within the EU
Daniela Budu, 07.03.2017, 13:20
Romania has a historic opportunity to get involved in the process of re-launching the European Union, which has been affected by Brexit and the rise of nationalist movements, the European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu has told Radio Romania. She urged the authorities to act in such a way as to get Romania significantly involved in the reform process recently launched by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who also presented 5 scenarios regarding the future of the Union. On the other hand, Corina Creţu has again drawn attention to the importance of attracting and using European funds. Corina Creţu:
“After EU accession, Romania had billions of euros at its disposal. We do want to make things better, but quite often we are tempted to talk about failures. Nevertheless more than 8,000 jobs have been created, and hundreds of schools, hospital units and hospitals were refurbished in the previous financial year. We are not faring equally well in the field of transports, because only 124 kms of highway have been built with European funds. Still we have managed to build 900 national roads. In this financial year we have over 23 million euros made available from the European Fund for Regional Development, we have cohesion funds, that should be used in strategic domains to modernize society, such as transports, small and medium sized enterprises, competitiveness, research and waste management infrastructure.”
Commissioner Creţu recalled that the three regional hospitals will be built from European funds in Cluj (central), Iasi (northeast) and Craiova (southwest). The locations have been set already and the European Investment Bank will draft feasibility studies in the coming period. Corina Creţu:
“I hope that by early 2018, at the latest, we will start the actual construction of the three regional hospitals in order to be able to spend the money by 2020. Such infrastructure projects cannot be built overnight. Therefore, we need at least several years to build these hospitals.”
According to Corina Creţu, Romania has at its disposal further European funds to modernize another 280 hospitals across Romania. She has again called on the Romanian authorities to attract community funds, especially now when the states with powerful economies are asking for a cut in the aid granted to less developed countries. In the period 2007-2013 Romania lost two billion euros worth of EU funds, although the framework was extended by more than 3 years and is coming to a close this month. The European Commissioner added that they managed to save more than a billion euros through backdated projects, and several projects with big delays were saved through the phasing out procedure. These projects will be accomplished with the help of funds allotted for the 2013-2020 period. (Translated by L. Simion)
