European Commission pre-suspends large part of three EU co-financed programs in Romania

Newsroom 25/10/2012 | 11:30

The European Commission today informed the Romanian authorities that it had decided to pre-suspend the largest part of the three programs co-financed through the EU structural funds. The decision was made following serious deficiencies in the management and control systems of the Transport, Regional and Economic competitiveness growth programs.

Issues raised are related to public acquisitions, the right financial management, as well as the prevention and identification of fraud and conflicts of interests, reads the statement of the EC. This means that no payments will be made towards Romania until measures will be made to correct the issues identified. Funds will be released as soon as the necessary actions are taken by the Romanian authorities.

At the same time, in order to protect the EU budget, several financial corrections were proposed for these programs and for the Environment program, the EC announced. The corrections would cover between 10 and 25 percent of the payments.

Romania has two months to react to the EC measures and to implement the necessary measures to remedy the deficiencies identified by the European Commission.