The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) was clinically dead when he took office in June 2025, but it was renegotiated and put back on track, saving the entire grant component of 13.57 billion euros and simplifying the plan by reducing the number of milestones and targets from 518 to 385, the Minister of Investments said on Monday in the Senate, during the debate on the simple motion against it.
“I came today to the supreme representative forum of Romania out of respect for you and for the citizens I serve as Minister of Investments and European Projects. I came today as a professional who has dedicated his career to economic development, structural reforms and attracting European funds. The motion we are debating today has two components. One in which there is an attack that directly targets me and the other that suggests that the ministry itself would not have results. (…) Let’s move on now to the concrete data about European money, answering the questions in the motion,” Pîslaru mentioned.
He mentioned that, at the time of taking office as minister, on June 23, 2025, Romania’s PNRR was clinically dead and the European Commission’s confidence in Romania’s capacity to deliver reforms was seriously affected, according to Agerpres.
“Romania’s NRRP was clinically dead. This is not a metaphor, it is a financial X-ray. The European Commission’s confidence in Romania’s capacity to deliver reforms was seriously damaged. Our country had been trying for months, with absolutely no success, to negotiate the revision of a plan that was long overdue, with implementation errors on large infrastructure investment projects, transformed into a Christmas tree with enormous, completely unrealistic over-contracting and a clear lack of appetite for key reforms. There was no sign of taking responsibility for the massive delays, and billions of euros were at stake. What have we done since June 2025? We renegotiated the very salvation of the entire plan in favor of Romania,” the minister noted.
According to him, the NRRP was put back on track with several clear objectives, the first being “not to lose a single euro of the free money component for Romania, i.e. grants.”
“I tell you with pride and honor, and we should all be happy, we saved the entire non-reimbursable amount allocated to Romania, 13.57 billion euros. We managed to simplify the plan by bringing clarity and predictability. We greatly simplified the PNRR, reducing the number of milestones and targets, from 518 to 385. We increased the efficiency and realism of the plan, we eliminated projects that existed only on paper, without start orders or construction sites started, and we focused on mature investments, with real chances of being completed by August 2026. We managed to contribute, which you know happened, directly to reducing the budget deficit. From the loan component, the one that adds to the deficit, we extracted the most mature and advanced investments and moved them to the grant component, to non-reimbursable money”, added Dragoș Pîslaru.
The Senate rejected, in Monday’s plenary session, the simple motion against the Minister of Investments and European Projects. There were 41 votes in favor and 73 votes against the motion.