Orban said the fist step that must be taken in order to improve the EU fund absorption rate is to adopt the new public procurement norms Romania and the European Commission agreed upon.
“The public procurement mechanism has been redefined together with the EC, so it will also include authorities which have so far operated outside the system, namely ANRMAP (the Romanian National Authority for Public Procurement Regulation and Monitoring, e.n.) and the authority within the Finance Ministry, which is tasked with checking the system ex-ante,” said the minister.
He pointed out that all these aspects must be adopted by the end of October.
“If we fail to implement [these norms] in time and successfully, the risk of payments being ceased for a long time is high. This is the major problem we must solve and we are running out of time,” said Orban.