The Romanian Government adopted, in today's meeting, a normative act that provides measures to simplify and de-bureaucratize access to the 46 billion euros that Romania will benefit from through the 2021-2027 Cohesion Policy.
By adopting the normative act, measures are established to integrate the lessons learned from the previous programming period 2014-2020, such as new measures to simplify, reduce the administrative burden, but also to strengthen the capacity of the managing authorities to implement and manage the programs in the period 2021-2027 in order to achieve a high absorption of the European funds allocated to Romania, announces Ministry of Investments and European Projects.
The emergency ordinance adopted today provides:
- ensuring the predictability of the launch calendar at program level for beneficiaries, so as to prevent any overlaps of calls with the same theme in similar periods of time and publishing the applicant's guide for public consultation;
- ensuring the necessary resources for the evaluation and selection of projects;
- simplifying the method of evaluating projects by introducing the single declaration that the applicant will submit together with the funding application, with the result that all eligibility criteria will be met during the contracting period, when the applicant must provide proof of what was declared in the single declaration;
the assessment of administrative compliance is completely digitalized and is carried out automatically by the IT system based on the single declaration generated by it. The digitalization of this stage brings advantages related to transparency, efficiency and traceability, in order to guarantee the correctness of the information; - the technical-financial evaluation will include a reduced number of criteria and sub-criteria, so that they allow for faster selection, partially digitalized and automated through the interoperability of various IT systems that ensure the provision of information about the legal and financial situation of potential beneficiaries;
- establishing a threshold of excellence, which allows a project to be automatically selected for approval and contracting;
- streamlining and accelerating the project implementation process, including by improving the functionalities of MySMIS2021/SMIS2021+ by automating certain actions at various stages of the program/project life cycle;
- introducing a specific monitoring mechanism based on milestone indicators, defined as quantitative or qualitative benchmarks against which the progress of a project's implementation is assessed;
- strengthening the project monitoring function at the level of the managing authority/intermediate body as appropriate, developing a monitoring plan, part of financing contract, which establishes a series of milestone indicators against which the progress of project implementation is monitored and evaluated;
- creating a performance framework that ensures accountability of the parties signing the projects, so that, in the event of repeated non-compliance with the milestone indicators and the plan of measures to recover delays, withholdings from the amounts allocated by the project are allowed and which may lead to the termination of the contracts. The funds remaining available after the application of the final financial withholdings are reallocated, by the care of the managing authority, for projects in reserve or for other priorities or to other actions within the same priority, in compliance with the national and European legal provisions in force;
- within the project monitoring process, the beneficiary prepares, quarterly, Progress Reports, and the managing authority/intermediate body prepares the on-site visit Reports;
- establishing formal aspects that do not require the signing of an additional act to financing contract (project) and which is carried out by notification;
- the obligation to draw up the Beneficiary Manual which should include explicit provisions, including stages, documents and any information necessary for the beneficiary in relation to the managing authority/intermediate body, including with regard to financial management, monitoring, verification, authorisation and reimbursement of expenditure, both for the implementation period and for the sustainability period;
- accelerating the implementation and valorization of interoperability and collaboration measures between authorities to increase the efficiency and simplification of activities for verifying eligibility conditions, through the exchange of information between authorities, with positive effects in terms of reducing the administrative burden of fund applicants in the evaluation, selection and contracting stage of projects.
A new information system for beneficiaries
Also, a relevant aspect regarding the approval of the regulatory act is that during this period, the development of the MySMIS2021/SMIS2021+ information system, which is the basis for the management of non-reimbursable external funds, is being finalized, and it will be interoperable with the systems, databases or registers administered by the public authorities and institutions provided for in the annex to the emergency ordinance adopted today.
In 2022, Romania received the approval of the Partnership Agreement and all 16 programs related to the Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 – 8 national programs and 8 regional programs, which bring Romania 46 billion euros for strategic investments in safer hospitals, strategic transport networks, modernization of water and sewage infrastructure and support for the business environment. The estimated calendar of European funds, with information on the calls to be launched this year through each of these programs, is already published on the MIPE website and will be updated regularly.
