Ancient Transylvanian buildings – churches, castles and fortresses – were brutally revamped with money from European taxpayers, British media claims.
„The imposing Franciscan monastery of Maria Radna in Romania is nearing the end of a costly makeover that should have restored it to full Baroque splendour, but instead it looks like a Disney castle built on a bomb site,” a journalist from The Telegraph wrote.
Old stones and roof tiles lie shattered in piles around the base of the building, while any materials in good enough condition to be of value are said to have been removed from the site and sold in Germany. Concrete blocks have replaced the stone, while bright red industrial tiles glow from the roof, each inscribed with the name of a German multinational, the article reads.
The media in UK points out that all these buildings were funded by the European Union’s Regional Development programme at a cost of well over EUR 100 million to the European taxpayer.
„Almost everywhere, the pattern is the same: old materials are ripped out and replaced with industrially made materials churned out from local factories. The workers are invariably young, low paid and inexperienced: in the case of a 13th century fortress in the city of Deva, workers were taken from a local prison and forced to do restoration work. Meanwhile, the money circulates between the beneficiaries and companies run by their friends,” it said in the article.
So far, EU money has found its way to 18 of the churches, and there are another 12 targeted for renovation work.
“It is a disastrous mix of corruption and the desire to get as much money out of the EU as is possible for these projects that causes the problems,” Hans Hedrich, co-founder of Neuer Weg, a built heritage and environment conservation group explained for The Telegraph.
Maria Radna monastery in Lipova, Arad County, was partially inaugurated Sunday, August 2, after rehabilitation works of over EUR 10 million (RON 47.14 million), started three years ago, thousands of people, including many European officials and an envoy of Pope Francis attended the event. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne, read to the people present a letter sent by the high priest of Vatican, stating that the event in Lipova is “of global importance”.
The restoration works will be completed on December 1, according to the new term. Works execution stage is 80 percent, with buildings for which there are works on finishing, while the parks and around access roads are under redevelopment. This is the largest funding received by a church in Romania.
In the complex of buildings were built a library with 10,000 old books, a museum, a permanent exhibition and conference halls.
The representatives of the monastery said that the entire complex will enter into a permanent tourist circuit at the end of 2015, it is estimated the number of visitors to double, being now of 80,000 tourists per year.