The review of the PNRR, in the evaluation of the European Commission

The government sent, at the end of last week, to the European Commission the request to amend the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, to which is added the chapter on the projects that will be financed from the RePower EU mechanism, according to a press release issued by the European Executive in Brussels .

The RePower EU chapter proposed by the Bucharest authorities covers two new reforms and six new investments, as well as a consolidated measure already included in the plan, according to information provided by the European Commission's representation in Bucharest. The reforms and investments in this chapter relate to increasing the production of green energy, improving the energy efficiency of buildings and improving the skills of the workforce in the field of green energy production.

The modification of the plan proposed by the Ciolacu government involves the elimination of four investments from the original plan and the modification of approximately 70 measures. Romania's request to amend the plan is based on the need to take into account high inflation from 2022, disruptions in the supply chain and the downward revision of the maximum grant allocation under the recovery and resilience mechanism from 14.2 billion euro to 12.1 billion euro. This revision is part of the June 2022 update of the PNRR grant allocation grid and reflects Romania's relatively better economic performance in 2020 and 2021 than originally anticipated.

The government also requested to transfer to PNRR its share of the Brexit adjustment reserve, amounting to 43.2 million euros. Together with the PNRR and RePower EU grants (euro12.1 billion and euro1.4 billion respectively) and the PNRR loans already committed under the original plan (euro14.9 billion), these funds bring the amended plan presented to almost 28.5 billion euros.

The Commission will now assess whether the amended plan still meets all the assessment criteria set out in the PNRR Regulation. If the Commission's assessment is positive, it will present a proposal to amend the Council's implementation decision to take into account the changes made to the Romanian plan. Member States will then have four weeks to approve the Commission's assessment.