Romania loses 28bn euros if EU fund absorption stays at current rate

The biggest problem as far as the European fund absorption is concerned is communication, say EU funding specialists and journalists.

Two and a half years after Romania's accession to the EU, the European fund absorption rate stood at 4.6% at the end of June, which means that out of the 30 billion euros the country should draw from 2007 through 2013, only 553 million euros have been paid to beneficiaries.

Out of the 8,221 projects submitted for structural funds alone by the end of May, 37% were rejected, that is 3,113 projects, while 1,057 had already been approved for financing. The very low absorption rate of projects can be explained by the fact that the potential beneficiaries did not build their applications, as they should have, which means they did not have enough accurate information sources available.

The main authorities in charge of managing and implementing European funds are the management authorities. The better they communicate with the others involved, such as beneficiaries, consultants, representatives of the business sector, the quicker non-repayable funds are released.

Communication of the management authorities is done with the potential beneficiaries, through the information provided about what options they have to get funding for their projects and with the applicants (represented either directly or by consultancy firms).

The main sources of information for applicants, consultancy firms, and journalists are the websites of the programmes and the guides for beneficiaries. The complexity of the guides and their language most of the time leads to a "mistranslation" of information, consultants say.

On the other hand, management authorities launch new calls for projects mainly via press releases sent to journalists.

"Some key institutions for managing EU funds have sent one release about important topics per month at best this year. One may say that, unfortunately, the information seems to be 'pour les connaisseurs', more precisely for those who know when and where certain data are published. Although some documents and figures are of the utmost importance, they are not advertised through press releases, so that their only chance at media coverage is the ability of journalists to constantly monitor the websites of the specialised authorities," says Ioana Morovan, HotNews journalist.