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Rovana Plumb: We have sent EC payment applications amounting to 187 million euros for POS Environment
Romania has sent the European Commission (EC) payment applications amounting to 187 million euros for the Sectoral Operational Programme (POS) Environment, which was unblocked in November, said Romanian Minister of the Environment and Forestry Rovana Plumb after the meeting of the ENVI Council in Brussels on Monday.
'We have already started working normally with the EC when it comes to the POS Environment payments. We have sent the EC payment applications amounting to 187 million euros. About December 19, 107 million euros will arrive in Romania and also, by the end of the year, we shall receive about 49 million euros from the EC. This is due to our having a very good partnership with the EC. The team we have as part of the management authority is excellent and we were the first to succeed in resuming payments after a six-month break,' said Rovana Plumb.
She made it clear that the Boc Government was to blame for the fact that the POS Environment payments were interrupted. The Boc Government 'knew as far back as December 2011 that all POS are in the focus of the EC and that these preliminary suspensions would appear.'
'In March 2012 the EC made again a new request for measures to be taken for Romania in point of POS Environment and nothing was done till May when we came and found that no measures had been taken by the management authority. And then we started driving at top speed, changed the coordinators of the team in the management authority, also tried to change mentalities in point of the role intermediary mechanisms have in the relations with consultants and of course managed, on the basis of a good relation and the permanent cooperation with the EC, especially with Directorate General Regio, to resume these payments, as we have planned, in November,' also said the Romanian Minister of the Environment.
Rovana Plumb made it clear that the payment applications that are very likely to be honoured, which she sent in the less than 8 months since she has been running the Ministry of the Environment and the Forestry, accounted for more than half of the entire sum of money paid by the EC to Romania between 2007 and May 2012.
'What I also want to tell you is the fact that, between 2007 and May 7, 2012, irrespective of the date at which this POS Environment started being operational, 335 million euros were received from the EC. From May 7, 2012 till now, today it is December 17, we have certainly been drawing from the EC 160 million euros and there is hope that we shall draw another 27 million euros by December 31,' said the Minister of the Environment.
As for the deficiencies the auditing authority discovered in carrying out POS Environment, they 'are first connected to the way the criteria mentioned in the task books were put out to tender, criteria that the auditing authority often identified as being subjective.' She added that one could infer from what she had talked with her Government colleagues and from the letters sent by the EC that 'the main deficiency is to be found with the system of public acquisitions' in all programmes.
'We also have three files that were sent to DLAF [the Anti-Fraud Department] referring to the incompatibility criterion that is represented by conflicting interests,' Rovana Plumb said too.