Romania has just over a month left to meet the conditions necessary to access the last funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), and 8.7 billion euros are at stake, which risk being lost permanently, warns economic consultant Adrian Negrescu, in a post on his Facebook page.
“The National Recovery and Resilience Plan was initially promoted as the country’s project that will structurally modernize Romania, bringing billions of euros for hospitals, highways and profound reforms. Today, looking lucidly at the figures and the reality on the ground, it becomes obvious that this program represents a major failure from an investment point of view. It is the image of a mammoth program built without a long-term vision, lacking substantiated impact studies and stuck in a thicket of administrative impotence and political instability. Initially, at the time of its launch, we called it the National Plan of Probable Reforms. In the meantime, it has become the National Plan of Failed Reforms. We are in a straight line, with 95% of the program’s implementation period already elapsed, and the balance sheet is grim,” Negrescu noted.
According to him, Romania managed to collect only 61% of the funds compared to the recalculated amounts and ‘a catastrophic 44% if we compare it to the initial, ambitious value of the program, of 29 billion euros’.
“The degree of fulfillment of the milestones and targets faithfully reflects the precarious collection rate, demonstrating that the budgetary apparatus has been completely overwhelmed by the complexity of the requirements. We only have one month and a few days left until the absolute deadline of the end of August 2026. There are still 8.7 billion euros at stake, a huge amount that we risk losing permanently due to indolence”, added Negrescu.
According to the consultant, Romania collected 13 billion euros, but “the bill of incompetence is already huge”.
“We have already lost 500 million euros from Payment Request number three and have been subjected to a massive amputation of 7 billion euros in the 2025 renegotiation, directly settling the chronic delays accumulated by previous governments. The root of this failure lies not only in the faulty execution, but in the very foundation of the PNRR. The program was put on paper in a hurry, being more of a shopping list and a sum of bureaucratic wishes than a strategic plan. A kind of shawarma with everything from an investment point of view,” the economic consultant also wrote.
He argues that the lack of serious economic and social impact studies has turned the PNRR into a “time bomb for the public administration.”
“Unrealistic deadlines and structural reforms of enormous complexity were assumed, without assessing the administrative capacity of the ministries to complete them or their real impact on society. The result is that Romania is suffocating today under its own inability to deliver what it chaotically, single-handedly, committed to do. Political instability has functioned like a handbrake pulled at full speed. The crisis triggered by the motion of censure has left the country facing the worst possible scenario, the management of the end of the PNRR by an interim Government. Although the ministers have tried to maintain the pace and have worked day by day to unblock the major reforms under their responsibility, the current legal limitations are blocking the state mechanism,” added Negrescu.
In the consultant’s opinion, the existence of an interim Government prevents the Executive from resorting to the procedure of assuming responsibility or adopting emergency ordinances to promote the necessary normative acts.
“The only remaining lifeline is the convening of Parliament in extraordinary sessions in the coming period. Deputies and senators must debate and adopt at an alarming pace the laws that hold billions of euros captive. The ultimate proof that the PNRR was poorly thought out, leaving the most difficult and sensitive reforms for last, can be seen in the list of blocked legislative projects, where every day of delay directly costs us. Among the remaining reforms, six legislative projects are the most important and amount to colossal sums. They were presented by Prime Minister Bolojan on Facebook,” Negrescu also wrote.
He claims that the Law on Unitary Wage, “an extremely politically sensitive project aimed at correcting inequities in the public system, has a value of 770 million euros.”
“Another 770 million euros is also the stake for the law on incompatibilities, aimed at cleaning up and making public functions transparent. The same amount is allocated to the law on rewarding the staff of the Ministry of Finance to improve the collection of revenues to the state budget, as well as the law on the civil service, which aims to professionalize the civil service. The largest financial stakes, at 972 million euros each, are attached to the law on the Urban Planning Code, essential for infrastructure, and the law on the decarbonization of the heating and cooling sector, vital for the energy transition. Will politicians be able to approve them in an extraordinary session? It seems that there are little chances in this regard,” added the economic consultant.
In his opinion, Romania is facing a painful paradox.
“While we desperately need highways, hospitals and modernization, the billions from the PNRR risk returning to Brussels or being canceled due to the incompetence of decision-makers. The PNRR was not a launching pad, but a mirror that revealed the chronic lack of vision, the absence of impact studies and the inability of the political class to put the national interest above backstage games. The few remaining days are no longer about development, but about desperate crisis management to save what is still possible from an already assumed failure,” added Adrian Negrescu.