Publicat pe 09/05/2017

Bucharest, May 9th, 2017: The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania and Intact Media Group organized the forum “EUROPEAN FUNDS. 2017 – a New Start”, on May 9th, 2017, at the CCIR Business Center. In the forum moderated by Alessandra Stoicescu, Executive Director of the Intact Media Group, there was a debate on the European funds regarding the opportunities for the funds allocated to Romania, the unblocking of their absorption process for Romania and last but not least, the role of banks in financing and facilitating the absorption process.

 

The President of CCIR, Mr. Mihai Daraban, stated at the opening of the event that: “it is necessary to reset the European fund, starting from the realities of the Romanian economy. I will always appeal to the realities in the field, because if we know them and we become aware of them, we know who we rely on and if we are able or not to implement, access etc. We are talking about an economy where we have 601,521 micro-enterprises, 47,941 small enterprises, 9,101 medium and 1876 large and very large. (…) On the other hand, I think we need to be aware of the three disqualifying positions for us at the level of the European Union, namely that we are in the penultimate place in labor productivity, last in research-innovation and, in particular, Instead of digitizing. (…) The digitization or bad rank we have in digitization also implicitly leads to this excessive bureaucracy. I have very much appreciated the position that the European Commissioner has received last days, Mrs. Corina Creţu, regarding the many necessary documents, stamped and signed by those who access European funds and implement them. For a cross-border project in Constanța, of an amount of 450,000 Euros, a Romanian-Bulgarian business center, I signed a document with 26,200 pages. (…) I think this reset for the required formalities needs to be started because micro-enterprises, which mean 9 employees and a maximum of 2 million Euro turnovers, can face this huge volume of documents necessary for the implementation of a project European? If we leave the answers for such issues, we will, hopefully, come in a straight way”.

European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Mrs. Corina Crețu, argued in the debate that “the central pillar of this policy is to provide economic and social prosperity in a united and strong Europe, to reduce development gaps not only between regions, between Member States, but also within the Member States. For us, these funds are tools that attempt to implement all of these formulated goals. European funds represent for Romania the only resource that can reach a living standard at the average of Western states, the development of public services, infrastructure, rural areas, and the economy. (…) We have a lot of challenges, the overall budget will be automatically low, in my opinion, by 12-15%, this is the UK’s annual contribution, then we have these migration-related, internal and external security challenges of a European army, and everyone is paying attention to this huge amount, a portfolio of 650 billion Euros with all the co-financing. The EU’s contribution is 450 billion, but alongside agriculture, it is the largest budget portfolio”. The European Commissioner also said that we need to maximize the money that we have in the 2014-2020 budget exercise.

Mrs. Rovana Plumb, the Deputy Minister for European Funds, said that the absorption for the previous multiannual financial programming period had to be over 90%. However, “the absorption rate, so the investment grade as a result, measured as a result of bringing European money, was 7%, bringing in the country at the end of the period almost 17 billion Euros in a relatively short period of 3 Years and a half. (…) Thanks to the European funds, the investments made in the previous period, we had an increase of almost 14% of GDP. Romania declined by the end of 2016 with a 3.7% unemployment rate, and thanks to European funds, Romania has created nearly 100,000 jobs”, said the minister.

The Mayor of Bucharest Municipality (PMB), Mrs. Gabriela Firea launched an appeal to the Government in order to understand the necessity of passing the capital belt in the administration of the City Hall. Gabriela Firea said the municipality is interested in finalizing this strategic objective for both the Capital and the metropolitan area: “Of the 82 kilometers of the belt, only 20 kilometers were made in the direction of two lanes. It is a negative balance that we can not solve with miraculous powers”. The mayor said that PMB wants to have the responsibility to take over Bucharest’s belt in its portfolio.

The debate was attended by representatives of the Parliament, the Romanian Government, the Managing Authorities of the Operational Programs, the banking system, the consultancy firms and the consultants and, in particular, the companies with positive experiences in accessing European funds, together with those of the Network of Chambers of Commerce and Industry and, last but not least, representatives of the Diplomatic Corps accredited in Romania.

 

Public Communication Office
tel: 0374474373, 0213190085,
fax: 0213190156, e-mail: bcp@ccir.ro