Romania to pay EUR 1 bln over EU funds fraud

Romania’s failure to combat fraud on EU funded projects runs a cost of EUR 1 billion, which has to be covered from public funds, said Thursday Eugen Teodorovici, minister of EU funds.

The country will have to pay the European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the EU, on the account of “deficiencies” in the system for the 2009-2011 period, said Teodorovici.

Following the fraud allegations, the EC blocked last year payments in a number of operational programs, including those in transport and human resources training, sending auditors in Romania to oversee investigations. The EC had suspicions on fraud regarding public procurements and the poor management of EU money in these programs.

In the meantime, the government was able to unblock all the operational programs, after undertaking corrections.

“It’s an impressive amount, a sum which could have been funneled, of course, towards the projects we are all talking about, a sum we all have to pay because we had a deficient system, because we had people in the system without the required training or determination to do things the right away,” said Teodorovici, quoted by Mediafax newswire.

The government is looking to tap more into European financing sources, in the face of limited public resources for investments.

According to Teodorovici, Romania took out over EUR 4.9 billion worth of EU funds in the year to date, sending the absorption rate of EU funds above 25 percent in the 2007-2013 programming period.

Authorities have recently hired private specialists to deal with the backlog of reimbursement requests for costs made by companies that developed EU funded projects. The recruiting firms would cash in a combined EUR 7.7 million under the contract signed with the ministry of EU funds.

Ovidiu Posirca

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