Conference on ”Structural and Cohesion Funds”

Address by Prime Minister Calin Popescu – Tariceanu on the occasion of his participation in the Conference on ”Structural and Cohesion Funds”, organized by the Ministry of Public Finances

“I want to congratulate the Ministry of Finances for this initiative, the organization of this conference which I consider as being very important, from a very simple reason: for months, I have been speaking about the necessity to prepare Romania for strengthening the absorption capacity of European funds.

I spoke about this thing as of the moment it became clear that the objective we established, the EU Accession on January 1st 2007 , became an achievable one. As of that moment, it was natural to consider the post –accession perspective. This seems extremely important to me, because Romania 's quicker and better transformation depends on the way in which we will attain this ambitious objective.

Consequently, this conference is of a maximum interest for Government, but also for local authorities, employers and trade unions' confederations, companies, non-governmental organizations.

The sum of about 20 billion EUR allocated to Romania under the form of structural and cohesion funds represents one of the most important benefits, but not the only of EU accession.

The structural and cohesion funds from Romania will assure a co- financing of about 5 billion EUR. Besides the structural and cohesion funds, Romania will further benefit of European funds of over 13 billion EUR for agriculture and rural development. This unprecedented financial support from EU, on the basis of the well - known principle of solidarity, aims at the acceleration of the Romania 's post - accession development.

I would like to draw again the attention on the fact that this money will not be given anyhow, but it will be allocated on the basis of projects. Whoever fancies that there will be a rain of euros after January 1st 2007 , is wrong. This money will not be given all of sudden; we will have to work hard to obtain it. The tricks of Romanian type have no place here. These funds represent public funds and the European contributor is extremely interested to find out how this money is spent. I can tell you that there are the necessary structures in Romania too to supervise the way this money is spent; these structures have been validated together with the European Commission, exactly for the control of the way the European funds are being spent.

These funds are destined for the infrastructure modernization and boost of the citizens' living standard, companies' competitiveness and number of jobs. Thus, we will bridge the gaps separating Romania from the other European countries. Consequently, we have the duty to work together to capitalize at maximum on the opportunities given by these funds, on the basis of the priorities established through the 2007 - 2013 National Development Plan and the national strategic reference framework. I will remind you these priorities: infrastructure development – and here I refer to transportation, environment, energy, boost of human competitiveness, more efficient use of human capital resources, boost of administrative capacity – which seems an extremely important point to me, and regional development. Further to the special efforts at legislative, institutional and financial level made over the past two years, all commitments resulted from the accession negotiations at Chapter 21- Regional policy and coordination of structural instruments have been fulfilled. We have succeeded in transforming all red and yellow flags which we initially received at this chapter from the European Commission, into green flags, the way the September Monitoring Report showed.

This is the clearest proof of the progress achieved by the teams of specialists involved in the preparation of the structural and cohesion funds' management. The programming documents of the structural and cohesion funds elaborated on the basis of the National Development Plan approved by the Government in December 2005, the 2007 -2013 national strategic reference framework and the 7 operational programmes deriving from it are in the final stage. We are expecting a rapid negotiation process of these documents with the European Commission over the first part of 2007. The administrative capacity in the field has boosted lately. Through the implementation of an action plan approved by the Government this summer, structures dedicated to these funds management have been set up at the level of all relevant institutions. These structures are based on the experience of the personnel dealing with pre-accession funds. There has been allocated a high number of posts, occupied today by elite employees with a high professional training, who are remunerated supplementary according to their training level. The responsibilities of every structure are established through agreements and implementation procedures which are in the final stage of elaboration.

I draw the attention again on the fact that the success of the European funds' absorption depends on the Government only to a small extent. The local authorities will be the main actors and there should be developed the human and institutional resources. The cooperation with the civil society, trade unions and employers' organizations, and the academic milieu play a special role.

The absorption of structural and cohesion funds is currently the first priority of the Romanian Government. On the basis of the progress achieved, we can state that the institutional and procedural system for these funds' management, the specialists' teams from Ministries and territory are prepared up to 90% extent to meet the requirements of an efficient and correct management of these funds. Over the following period, we will have to settle some technical aspects and also to agree as soon as possible with the European Commission on the funds' programming documents. We will be 100% ready when Brussels gives us green light for the programmes ' implementation.

I would like to express my conviction that over the next years, Romania will prove its capacity to achieve a high level of absorption of structural and cohesion funds and to bridge the gaps separating it from the other European states. I believe it is not a shameful thing to try to learn as much as possible from the other countries' experience. This year, I made a visit to Spain that is well known for its success in this field, for the way it knew to absorb the European funds. There are numerous European countries that achieved success in this field and are ready to share their experience. I do not believe we should invent each time the wheel or the gunpowder.

I invite you, Minister to achieve cooperation as soon as possible with the European partners. We should try to learn as much as possible from their experience in this field. I wish you success”.

Government of Romania - Press office - 11.12.2006