The Minister of Investments officially announced today an extremely important decision for all of Romania, one that comes as extremely good news for millions of Romanians, and this is because the Government will send the first payment request for PNRR to the European Commission until the date of May 31.
The Minister of Investments talks below about what this decision means, but also about the amount of 3 billion euros that is requested by Romania, and which will most likely come, considering that the requirements would have been met for the money to be sent by the European institution.
"Indeed, the Government of Romania approved today the last document necessary for payment request number 1, with a deadline of May 31, 2022, to be sent to the European Commission. As is known, payment request number 1 has a value of 3 billion euros, and for this Romania must meet three major conditions.
A first condition is the one related to the operational arrangements, a document that was signed yesterday by the European Commission, so that this condition related to the operational arrangements has been fulfilled. These mechanisms in the operational arrangements define the control and verification mechanisms, which we have at the level of each milestone in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The second condition concerns the 21 milestones that we had to meet by the end of 2021. Today, they are all uploaded into the European Commission's Phoenix electronic system. And we still have the third condition regarding the audit of the mechanism of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, an audit report which, as a result of today's approved decision, is to be completed by the time payment request number 1 is submitted.
Therefore, Romania respects the submission deadline for the payment request, namely May 31, 2022. Regarding today's decision, very briefly: the mechanism of irregularities, corruption and fraud that may appear in the operations was regulated and, respectively, projects to be carried out in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
It is very important to remember for the beneficiaries of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan that we will no longer have financial corrections, as in the case of the cohesion policy, and as for irregularities, they will be dealt with from the perspective of national legislation and fines or other sanctions, which are provided for irregularities in the national legislative system."
