Commissioner Valean: PNRR projects well-written, but Romania needs to keep them up

The projects on the transport infrastructure contained in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) are very well written and coherent, but Romania needs to keep them up, European Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean told a specialty conference on Tuesday.

"We have now, at the start of the financing period, very large sums available to Romania: 9.7 billion euro through the PNRR, dedicated to transport, of which approximately 4 billion euro on rail, 3.5 billion euro on road, 600 million euro for the subway, around 180 million euro for green buses. We then have the European financial instrument called Connect Europe Facility with 763 million euro guaranteed until 2024, plus other additional financial lines where money can be drawn from through competition. We also have the cohesion funds, of 1.5-2 billion euro only for transport. So, in total, approximately 12 billion euro are available for transport, double compared to the previous financing period, 2014-2020. The allotments for rail infrastructure are unprecedented, approximately 5 billion euro," Valean emphasized.

The European official added that the main threat that can stand in the way of implementing the investment plan in transport remains the low administrative capacity both in state institutions, as well as in the companies that should submit projects.

When asked if a renegotiation of the PNRR is possible, Adina Valea said that with "a long-term plan, it's important to keep it up, because otherwise, if you change it, you're practically losing financing and opportunities."

The map of large infrastructure investments in 2022 and the projection on the medium and long-term in the domain of transport are among the topics debated, on Tuesday, during the online conference titled "Upgrade Romania: Is there need for a national pact on transport?"