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Commissioner Cretu: Delays in public procurement, healthcare, waste management
European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu said Thursday in Bucharest that Romania has so far met 14 out of 22 conditionalities set by the European Commission, but it is still delayed in areas such as public procurement, healthcare and waste management.
"We are talking about a lot of money, but money is not everything. Administrative capacity matters even more that the European funds per se. Money is necessary but not sufficient to properly solve problems in Romania. (...) Romania has so far met 14 out of 22 conditionalities set by the European Commission, but there are delays in areas such as public procurement, healthcare and waste management," said Cretu.
She added that there are 280 investment projects for the next years regarding outpatient healthcare facilities in villages and towns and 65 emergency care rooms at county hospitals and three regional hospitals.
"The signing ceremony for the Regional Development Operational Programme for the next years was held on June 23, 2015. Under that programme, three regional hospitals were to be established. (...) I am very sad to see that in March 2016 not even the sites of the hospitals to be are known," said Cretu.
The European Commissioner mentioned that none of the investment projects can be implemented because no map of medical infrastructure to clearly show the healthcare needs has been drawn up so far, saying that she warned about that all the ministers and officials she has met so far.
"The situation is similar in waste management. There are investment projects worth 380 million euros for the development of waste management, but there is no national plan yet in the area," added Cretu.
She said that experience so far indicates that all the European countries had problems with using the funds in the beginning, but politicising the matter is of no use.
She added that there have been outcomes with positive impacts on some areas, but outcomes in other areas were disappointing.
"In order to salvage major projects, we have introduced them for the 2014-2020 framework, which means a big share of the money for these years will be used to complete works that should have been ready by December 31, 2015," said Cretu.
In turn, Vice Premier Vasile Dincu, minister of Regional Development and Public Administration, on Thursday said that the low absorption of the European funds was often caused by "the Romanian foolery" and the meddling of politics.
"It's true that we've had for quite long, due to negligence, a loss of rhythm in the EU funds' absorption. I don't believe in an international sabotage against Romania. Many times, Romania is sabotaged by Romanian foolery. I believe that the political competition, for many times, has sabotaged Romania, the irrational competition. For too many times this competition has stretched to the field of EU funds' absorption because we simply didn't understand the necessity to work together, no matter the political force, the political moment, to find resources to work in Romania's interest," said Dincu at the launch of a project aiming to develop poor regions of Romania.
He showed optimism, declaring that this year another kind of collaboration exists, with the political forces included.