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28 martie, 2024

18 iunie, 2017

MEP Siegfried Muresan (photo) acknowledged on Friday in Bucharest that member states had an unexpectedly difficult start in accessing the European funding under the new 2014-2020 budget cycle but warned that Romania seems to be the only member state that fails to correct anything in this matter.

Warnings should have been received at high government level by the Minister for European Affairs Ana Birchal and the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Public Finance (MFP), Enache Jiru, both having confirmed their presence at the debate, according to the official agenda released on Wednesday.

Both, most likely caught on the „front line” in the Coalition-Government battle, cancelled their attendance at the event, so that the representatives of business community and civil society present at the debate had to be content with the messages of a MFP director.


Raluca Zamfirescu (MFP) deplored on behalf of her „colleagues from MDRAP” the Brussels bureaucracy and persistently emphasized on „half full glass”: Romania was, from the first year of accession, and now still is a net beneficiary of the accession funds – that is, it gets more than it gives to Brussels.

The European Parliament’s Information Office in Romania organized on Friday the first national debate on the 2018 EU draft budget, currently in the process of analysis and Parliament-Council-Commission trilateral negotiation.

Draft budget, key data presented by Siegfried Muresan

The debate organized by the European Parliament’s Information Office was attended by the MEP, Siegfried Muresan (EPP), Chief Negotiator on behalf of the European Parliament for the 2018 draft budget. He specified that the 2018 EU draft budget is in line with the priorities set by the European Parliament but at the forthcoming negotiations with the representatives of the European Commission and the European Council, he will insist on raising the financial allocations for the COSME program that addresses the European SMEs.

Siegfried Muresan has reviewed the main budget milestones proposed by the Commission, with the additional allocations compared to the 2017 budget for some important programs (Horizon 2020, Erasmus, Research, etc.) which also raises some „problems” in the European Parliament’s view.


These problems, says Siegfried Muresan, would be mainly the following:

  • The decrease of COSME program by 2.6%. Siegfried Muresan explains that the funds for SMEs have significantly increased in 2016 and despite the cut applied, the proposed allocations are higher in 2018 than in 2015, for instance, but the Parliament does not want to send negative signals to the economy, so it will insist on an increase, no matter how small.
  • Unclear funds allocated to the Southern Neighbourhood. While the Balkan route of migration has been closed and the agreement with Turkey is still in place, the situation of migration flows through the Mediterranean Sea to Italy cannot be controlled because the European authorities do not have a partner for dialogue in Libya.

Funds for migration will also be reduced in 2018, but the Romanian MEP does not consider that to be a problem, first because the relocation of migrants goes very slowly, so the funds, even if reduced by 18%, are sufficient.

EU has prepared the money, it is up to Government to bring them to Romania

Siegfried Muresan explained on Friday that the European Parliament wants to make sure that there is enough money in the next year’s budget for rapidly defraying the member states’ projects and the Commission has increased by 25% compared to the previous budget the amounts for payment appropriations for structural funds and cohesion funds.

In 2017, Siegfried Muresan says, the absorption rate is very low in the member states. At the EU level, out of 564 Managing Authorities (AM), 459 have been accredited. The MEP amply explained the reasons that led to this general situation but warned: „In recent months, other states have made significant progress, but we, Romania, are in the worst situation at this chapter. I hope things will change quickly!”.

Romania has only 2 accredited Management Authorities out of 10.

Romanian officials’ point of view, expressed by Raluca Zamfirescu, MFP director, is not so pessimistic – what is important, the main message was, is that we have been for ten years a net beneficiary of the community funds.

Regarding the situation of the well-known AMs, Raluca Zamfirescu said: „I can tell that although a system simplification has been envisaged in the negotiations on the Multilateral Financial Framework, we see that has occurred only in part of the problem. It’s difficult to meet the Ex-Ante conditionalities, and our colleagues are facing that.”

The set of Ex-Ante conditionalities has been negotiated and accepted by Victor Ponta’s government in 2014. The deadline for meeting these conditionalities was 31 December 2016.

When not concerned about the high stake represented by Romania taking over the EC Presidency, Raluca Zamfirescu described as a concern of the ministry department that she leads the matter of „maintaining a balance between classical investments and the new type of investments”, of the digitization category, persistently proposed by the European Commission.

It is noteworthy that the Commission has been insisted for 3 years that Romania should adopt the Transportation General Masterplan and start building highways.

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