Bucharest, September 2011
Str. Sevastopol
nr. 13 - 17,
Sector 1
Bucureşti
tel 021 212 3126
021 212 3127
fax 021 212 3108
e-mail
office@ipp.ro
www.ipp.ro
Main conclusions of the report
Structural Funds – from opportunity for development to budget of pray.
The second edition of the Structural Funds Monitoring Report which covers
other three Operational Programs, namely the OP for Environment, OP for
Economic Competitiveness and OP for Transportation endorses most of the
conclusions issued with the occasion of the previous Report. There is a lack of
vision and incapacity of properly negotiating the development objectives’
budgets at the level of the general management of the structural funds. At the
same time, there is a lack of interest of the beneficiaries (in this particular case
the local public authorities) to submit proposals and thus to efficiently use the
structural resources for durable development.
For example:
At the level of OP for Transportation:
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The roads with the highest traffic parameters are still not financed
through structural funds while so far those with less traffic benefitted
from important support. Investments of this type should take into
consideration also the traffic evaluations on various roads sectors.
Fragmented financing of transportation projects, with no logic continuity,
might lead to spending important amounts of money with no real
development. Due to the particularity of this Program, we suggest that
transportation investment projects’ stages should be planned more
properly.
Despite the last years’ critiques, the cost per modernized kilometer
remains very high in Romania, and this shows that regardless the source
of funding, the money is not efficiently allocated in this field.
Except for roads investments projects where concrete results are better
encountered, other types of transportation (such as by train or ship) are
underfinanced.
At the level of OP for Environment:
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Unfortunately, although Romania has clear responsibilities in what
regards protection of environment, only half of the local public authorities
were aware and submitted proposals under structural funds, some of
these having in fact inadequate objectives (for eg. the old landfills were
closed through these projects without aiming to also properly take care
of the various categories of waste).
There are still landfills such as the ones from Teleorman Satu Mare or
Timis counties, which, regardless their conditions that do not meet the
EU standards, are still collecting garbage.
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There is no coordination at the national level with regards to Romania
standards enforcement in this domain
The financing of the energy system in Romania is improperly divided
between Operational Program for Environment and the one for
Economic Competitiveness, and in this respect those projects that are
financed through OP Environment only look to the pollution aspect and
not to the efficiency of the Heating local system.
With only few exceptions, not even those large Electrotermic Heating
Stations which are included in Implementation Framework as most
polluting, haven’t submitted proposals under structural funds in order to
make the local system more efficient.
At the level of OP for Economic Competitiveness:
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Although important funds were granted to the private companies, the
projects and the related indicators do not reflect a significant importance
that should be given to the concrete final results of the investments. So
far, apart from the money absorbed by the companies, it is difficult to
observe the results at the level of the market/population, which should
be the ultimate goal of such projects.
According to the financed projects, Bucharest and the big municipalities
were the most financed, the rest of the country, including the less
developed areas remaining underfinanced. The winners have been the
universities and the public research centers, under these Operational
Programs, as they have the resources and the stability to advance the
necessary resources in such projects.
Due to the lack of vision of the Government with regards to supporting
the development of the business sector, we recommend that the banking
sector will adjust their offer to the local realities, particularly in the areas
where most projects were gained.
As long as there is no single data basis with meaningful information that
goes beyond names/recipients of the projects, it is hard to speak about
efficient allocation of structural funds in Romania. We wonder to what
extend such detailed information is on purposely kept away from the
general public.
As it was also mentioned in our previous Monitoring Report, the technical
assistance remains an important source of funds for the very few actors that
operate in the market. The money is incredible for a country like Romania. For
example, only Bostina&Bostina gained approx. 941.210 euro (3.764.843 lei) for
technical assistance provided to various Managing Authorities. At this point, the
real winners of the structural funds in general are, in our opinion, such
consultancy companies which benefited from the unclear relation/roles existing
between State authorities and private companies offering consultancy. The
winning recipe seems to involve an companies from abroad as well.
In what regards our list of suggestions that were introduced by the previous
Monitoring Report and underlined through the current one (such as: to have an
unified reporting methodology with regards to the absorption of structural funds
in Romania, to create a unique data base with meaningful, detailed information
about what exactly was financed and in what locations, etc.) we expect that
these will be taken into consideration by the recently established Ministry of
European Affairs. We hope that the establishment of this institution will not only
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serve in formally improving the relation with the European Commission, but will
really contribute to financing projects with sustainable results for Romania.
The evaluation of these three Operational Programs analyzed in this Monitoring
report shows that the highest percentage of structural funds payments from the
EU Contribution allocated through 2007 - 2013 Financial Programming is at the
level of OP for Economic Competitiveness (13,32%) according to the figures of
the Authority for Structural Funds Coordination displayed at August 31, 2011.
At the level of all Operational Programs, the highest rate of such payments are
encountered at the level of the Regional Operational Program - 22, 85% and
the smallest at OP for Transportation - 2,84%.
Finally, we hope that such a complex monitoring effort that the Institute for
Public Policy has been carried out during more than 6 months will make the
national authorities aware of how important it is to properly manage the next EU
Financial Programming by offering the civil society the possibility of providing
an input before decisions will be made. The role of the civil society should be
more important in this process based on an institutionalized form of
consultation that the Government should endorse like in other countries (eg.
Bulgaria or Poland) where leaders of the civil society are active members of
multisectoral structural funds absorption’s monitoring committees. In fact such
consultation process for the future Financial Programming should be already
started in order to really create the necessary conditions for sustainable
projects in Romania instead of favoring the businesses of economic/political
interest groups, like unfortunately happened under the current financial
exercise. At this point, the Managing Authorities claim that time for such
consultation has not arrived! Is it really so?
For any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact Elena Iorga,
Programs Director, Institute for Public Policy, Bucharest, ROMANIA, at + 4 021
212 3126/6, e-mail: elena@ipp.ro.
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