The National Council of SMEs in Romania (CNIPMMR) rejects the introduction of new bureaucratic tasks for entrepreneurs benefiting from financing under Measure 2 for the following reasons:
- No additional reporting obligations can be introduced for beneficiaries, thus creating a precedent, approximately 2 years after obtaining funding and termination of contractual obligations.
- The very short deadline (until 01/27/2023, of which two days are free) granted to beneficiaries to complete the new reports, according to the indications and formats established by the instruction, is to the detriment of entrepreneurs, who need additional time to fulfill the new obligations.
- We do not support the request of public institutions to be sent, in a new format, information that they already have, being already reported by beneficiaries according to progress reports. Institutions have the obligation to extract their information in the formats they want from the data they have and not to request new reports.
- There is no longer a contractual basis for introducing new obligations on the beneficiaries of Measure 2. According to the financing contracts, the beneficiaries were obliged to maintain the number of employees for 6 months and, within 180 days of receiving the financial aid, to upload the Progress Report to the electronic application, together with all supporting documents, thus fulfilling their contractual obligations towards the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Tourism, having not concluded a financing contract with the Ministry of Investments and European Projects.
CNIPMMR believes that this instruction should only be applied to beneficiaries for whom reporting irregularities have been found, thus helping them to correct some formal aspects in order to avoid recovery measures. Finance granted and not applied to all beneficiaries of Measure 2, regardless of whether or not inconsistencies in reporting were found.
On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, the instruction regarding the completion and submission of final reports by the beneficiaries of Measure 2 was published, according to which they must submit a new report by January 27, 2023.
