The first seven contracts financed under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan have been signed in Bucharest by local authorities and the Ministry of Development. They aim at rehabilitating and modernizing some schools and city halls and at increasing the thermal efficiency of some administrative buildings. Attending the event, the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said that another 1,430 projects, worth more than 2.4 billion Euros, are pending. He has given assurances that all local communities, regardless of the region or the political affiliation of the mayor, have equal chances to funding through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Nicolae Ciucă: “The entire process of submitting projects and eligibility unfolded in a very transparent and modern manner, using a digital platform. Through this procedure, we ensure modern mechanisms through which to facilitate both the access of the local authorities and to prove to the Romanian citizens that they can trust the commitments we have made.”
The prime minister also said that the government was working on the second application for funding that is to be sent to the European Commission, so that Romania can fully benefit from the amount of 10 billion Euros allocated for this year. Funding from Brussels will be used also for a large part of Moldavia’s highway (A7), which connects the south to the north of Romania, and which measures a total of almost 440 km, up to the border with Ukraine. The section from Ploiești to Paşcani, about 320 km, is financed through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The National Road Company has signed the contract for the first section Ploiești – Buzău (60 km), worth almost 4 billion lei (about 800 million Euros), as well as for the construction of its middle sector, Mizil-Pietroasele (28 km). All the works must be finished by August 2026, in order to be disbursed through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which is a short-term plan designed by the EU for relaunching the post-pandemic economies.
The transport minister Sorin Grindeanu asked the Road Company to sign the contracts for all 13 lots by the end of the year, a very tight schedule which is extremely difficult to observe, given that the authorities have not yet launched the tenders, which can be contested, and therefore the whole process protracted. Moldavias motorway will take over most of the traffic on the current E85 national road which has only one lane in each direction and a slightly wider roadside verge, often used irregularly by drivers as another lane of traffic. In terms of accidents, E85 road is currently the most dangerous in the entire country. Moldavias motorway is the first in Romania to adapt as much as possible to the European environmental norms. Thus, it will have 24 spaces for charging electric cars, 65 lots of anti-snow forest curtains will be planted on a total length of over 63 km and on an area of 160 hectares, and the technological roads will be used as bike lanes. (LS)
