Romania has EUR 164 / per capita to spend from European Funds; lowest amount in the EU

Romania obtained the lowest amount of money from European Funds per capita as part of the cohesion policy in the EU for 2014- 2020: EUR 164, half the amount for Slovakia or Hungary inhabitants. Furthermore, amounts allocated for education are too small, an Erste Bank report shows.

The report covers sis states in CEE: Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia. The total amount allocated to the six states in the European financing program is EUR 167.1 billion. Poland will receive nearly half of this sum: EUR 77.6 billion (44.6 percent of the total for the region). Romania can access EUR 22.9 billion (13.8 percent), Czech Republic and Hungary each get EUR 21.9 billion (13.2 percent), Slovakia can access  EUR 13.9 billion (8.4 percent), and lastly Croatia get EUR 8.6 billion (5.1 percent).

Depending on European funds available per capita in 2014-2020, Romania is behind its neighbors. Slovakia leads the pack with EUR 369 per capita, followed by Hungary – EUR 316, Czech Republic – EUR 299,, Croatia – EUR 289, Poland – EUR 288 and Romania – EUR 164.

Also, Romania is recorded in the Erste Bank report with the lowest European Funds allocated for education, research and development: less than 8 percent of the total funds available for 2014-2020. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Slovakia has a 14.5 percent share of its funds designed for education and research.

“Medical services are in a critical state, cause by the medical exodus and the lack of equipment in public hospitals. As far as education is concerned, the number of closed down schools in rural areas is causing educational abandon to spike. The main priorities should financing health and education, given that  Romania is scheduled to increase funds for expenses in research and development to 2 percent of the GDP by 2020”, according to the Erste report.

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