Commissioner Valean: Speeding up motorway construction in Romania mainly depends on national authorities

Speeding up the construction of motorways in Romania depends mainly on the Romanian authorities, European Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean told an online debate on last Thursday, emphasizing that financing sources have always been available.

"We are never out of plans, it is important that they meet the deadlines and that everything goes as planned. I say this because speeding up the construction of motorways in Romania depends mainly on the Romanian authorities. Potential financing sources, even alternative ones, have always existed. Perhaps this has also often confused us because we didn't know which one was the more efficient, but delays and all sorts of issues have brought us in the situation where [Romania] has an unsatisfactory number of motorways and total length of motorways. Apart from providing funds to member states, Romania included, the European Commission also provides cohesion funds, regional funds, and Romania can get financing from here, in addition to this we have recently adopted (...) this European regulation, a set of measures member states could apply to reduce administrative barriers," Valean said when asked whether the European Commission has a plan to speed up the completion of motorways along the main TEN-T corridors, which would also result in Romanian motorways being finalized faster.

She explained that the intention was to shorten deadlines, make procedures easier, so that all the bureaucratic-administrative activities related to permits, various analyses and studies should take less time.

Adina Valean said that these administrative barriers have been found to often delay infrastructure projects.

The European Commission's Representation organized on Thursday an online dialogue on "Safe travel - summer 2020".

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