Big Companies Grab Large EU-funded Projects

05.25.2011 ZF English

While the state, through its institutions, finds it hard to attract funds from the EUR19.6 billion made available by the EU until 2013, big companies in Romania, with turnovers of tens of millions of euros, jump at the chance of conducting expansion projects with EU money.

So far, money attracted through the operational program to increase economic competitiveness (POS CCE) has amounted to EUR341 million, only 12.2% of the total amount available. The program, alongside the operational program to develop human resources (POS DRU), is extremely important considering that the money attracted through this program goes directly into the economy.

At the end of April, there were 8,500 projects submitted for POS CCE, only 1,708 (20%) of which obtained financing contracts.

Payments made through this program went up by RON400 million (EUR98 million) against December of last year, raising the absorption rate by around three percent. By 2013, Romania should use the EUR2.5 billion funds to increase productivity of companies operating on the local market to a level closer to that of Western-European countries.

Among the biggest companies that took EU money for investments are Automobile Dacia, which took nearly EUR5 million of European money to manufacture a new cylinder block, Alro Slatina received over EUR4 million in non-repayable EU funding to invest in equipment, and one of George Copos's companies, Ana Imep, took EUR1.3 million to boost production capacity.

The biggest EU-financed projects are grabbed by big companies that have the financial power to allocate funds to get EU money and have people directly involved in the implementation of these projects.

The problem with small companies is that the state does not take concrete measures to help them - potentially take out bank loans to cover the co-financing, and on top of that comes the bureaucracy.