Accreo opens subsidiary in Romania, runs projects of EUR 50 mln for attracting structural funds

Polish company Accreo, specialized in providing counsel for attracting European funds, opened a subsidiary in Romania.

The subsidiary was launched in June and it currently works on projects that sum up over EUR 50 million. At the moment there are 5 projects under way at Accreo, which concern the development of production facilities, acquiring new equipment and Greenfield projects, especially in the industrial domain and services.

Accreo targets mostly large multinational companies to which it will offer integrated services. “We wish to develop Romania into a regional business hub, but we are only at the beginning now,” said Laurentiu Dinu, general manager of Accreo Romania.

By the end of the year, Romania has yet to attract European funds of around EUR 400 million, but their attraction depends on identifying “opportunities on the market and knowing how the mechanisms work,” said Michal Gwizda, partner in Accreo Poland.

Some of the fields where Romania has potential to evolve through the use of European funds are renewable energy- solar energy, wind energy and hydro energy, research& development and the expansion of production capacities, as well as Greenfield investments. So far, the absorption rate of the funds granted for 2007- 2010 is 12-13 percent,” said Dinu.

According to Dinu, Romania should approach the issue of the attraction of structural funds from a competitive perspective. “Member states who are able to attract more funds, more rapidly, will be at an advantage,” he said. So far, Romania has had a preference for small and medium enterprises, which may pose problems from the point of view of the impact and financial perspective. A competitive solution may be to focus on large brands,” said Dinu.

There are a series of drawbacks that impend Romania from attracting EU funds more rapidly. First of all, it does not have a blueprint of the most vital projects it needs to implement in important sectors such as infrastructure projects, like Poland does, for instance. A large part of the funds that need to be attracted are in the infrastructure sector, and this takes time. If Romania does not speed procedures, it may lack the necessary time to attract the funds.

The task books are very detailed in Romania, while in other countries with more experience in attracting EU funds, such as Ireland, for instance, the task books are only several pages long.

“In Poland too we have faced inertia in the absorption of European funds, doubled with the investors’ skepticism, but we managed to change this and obtain for our clients more than 55 percent of the total European funds destined for new projects in our country,” said Gwizda. “Even in Poland, the system of attracting funds is a copy/paste of the system of more evolved countries such as Germany and Spain. Romania could also copy/paste procedures from more advanced countries,” he added.

One of the main issues is also reticence of the local business environment in accessing European funds. “Some companies, when they hear about EU funds, prefer to turn to the capital market, banks or seek other solutions, because they wish to be spared of the headache of dealing with this,” said Dinu.

Otilia Haraga

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