Romania has recorded an EU funds absorption rate for the 2014-2020 period below the EU average, while in March 2017 the country would be able to request structural and cohesion funds as reimbursements for the developed projects, after the accreditation of the management authorities, Minister for European Funds Dragos Dinu said in an interview granted to HotNews.
According to Dinu, Romania currently has an absorption rate of 0.98% in the new programming period, while the EU average is 2.6%. Basically, the country has so far received EUR 2.3 billion from the European Commission, of which EUR 2 billion are advance payments granted by Brussels and EUR 300 million are funds for agriculture.
At the moment, Romania cannot send the Brussels declarations of expenditures for European projects implemented in programmes managed by the Ministry of European Funds and by the Ministry of Regional Development in order to receive reimbursements of structural funds, given that the management authorities of the two ministries are not yet accredited by the European Commission, the minister said.