Save Romania Union (USR) leaders from the south-eastern region of Romania have convened in Mahmudia, Tulcea County the past days, to set up the USR electoral strategy for the 2024 elections, planning to build a right-wing pole in Romanian politics, to replace the current ruling power.
USR Deputy Chairman Dan Barna told a news conference on Saturday that Romania must replace the current government, considering its waste of public money. “A right-wing pole is being built ; at this moment, Catalin Drula, the national leader of USR, and the right-wing forces who understand that the incumbent Social Democratic Party-National Liberal Party (PSD-PNL) government will only lead us to waste, the right-wing forces and USR, who understand that if they don’t change things, this extraordinary National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) can only remain a fiction, and all those projects that mean roads, bike paths, schools, hospitals, energy infrastructure, saving the environment and forests are not happening, because we have a government that is much more concerned about special pensions than about development projects,” Barna, argued.
USR Public Policy Department coordinator Cristian Ghinea announced that next week the regular report on the National Recovery and Resilience Plan will be released and will reveal delayed healthcare, education and transport investment. “There are PNRR milestones which time has passed and there is no interest for these things to happen. If you ask me, we don’t have local barons who are interested in them, because if we look at the roads, even in terms of social and medical infrastructure, there is one person who goes to the door of the PSD or PNL minister, knocks there and asks for money, which is OK. It is a political mechanism to short-circuit bureaucratic impotence. Nobody knocks for minibuses, trains and then we are behind schedule”, Ghinea, pointed out.
He also mentioned what he called a budget crisis, saying that in 2023 Romania borrows EUR 1,300 per second, with the European Commission being very worried about that.
Leader of the USR MEPs Vlad Botos mentioned the efforts made by USR leaders to keep Romania’s accession to the Schengen area on the European agenda and supported the need to draw in European funds, given that at the moment, Romania has absorbed only about 78% of the available funds.
“There are EUR 80 billion for us in the next seven years, 30 billion under PNRR and 50 billion from classic European funds, European programmes that we don’t really discuss in Romania but that are considerable amounts. And to tell you what the funds actually mean, I am urging you to look at the bridge that will greatly help this region and Tulcea County, the bridge in Braila: 70% of the funds on which the bridge was built are European funds,” Botos stated.