European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu said Thursday in Bucharest that Romania has so far met 14 out of 22 conditionalities set by the European Commission, but it is still delayed in areas such as public procurement, healthcare and waste management.
“We are talking about a lot of money, but money is not everything. Administrative capacity matters even more that the European funds per se. Money is necessary but not sufficient to properly solve problems in Romania. (…) Romania has so far met 14 out of 22 conditionalities set by the European Commission, but there are delays in areas such as public procurement, healthcare and waste management,” said Cretu.
She added that there are 280 investment projects for the next years regarding outpatient healthcare facilities in villages and towns and 65 emergency care rooms at county hospitals and three regional hospitals.
“The signing ceremony for the Regional Development Operational Programme for the next years was held on June 23, 2015. Under that programme, three regional hospitals were to be established. (…) I am very sad to see that in March 2016 not even the sites of the hospitals to be are known,” said Cretu.
The European Commissioner mentioned that none of the investment projects can be implemented because no map of medical infrastructure to clearly show the healthcare needs has been drawn up so far, saying that she warned about that all the ministers and officials she has met so far. More…