Romania withdraws too little EU funding

Romania receives an increased amount of EU funding since its EU accession. It is entitled to withdraw a total of 30 billion euros by 2013, or eleven million euros daily (calculated for seven years). But so far, the daily Gândul points out, it has only called up 0.5 percent of the available funding. The newspaper takes a closer look at the country's agricultural sector: "The supervisory systems governing what farmers have to declare when they spend EU money are inefficient. For sure, it's not easy to establish an effective mechanism for financing the agricultural sector. It took even the Germans nine years to get theirs going. It's impossible to say how long Romanian politicians will need to accomplish the task, because when a party or coalition takes power here in Romania their first concern is to dismiss those who had kept it functioning up to that point - for incompetence. … In Romania more is being torn down than is being built because our rulers' main priority is to serve their political clientele."

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» To the complete press review of Tuesday, June 9, 2009