Investment grants from Measure 3 will be canceled and the amounts will be reallocated to Measure 2, following which Measure 3 will be subsequently relaunched with amounts from REACT – EU, shows a draft emergency ordinance prepared by the Ministry of European Funds and Investments, according to which applicants for Measure 3 must resubmit their application if they want to have a chance at funding.
“The envisaged changes are aimed at canceling Measure 3 in its current form to allow for the reallocation of amounts from Measure 3 to Measure 2 to meet all eligible funding applications currently submitted, including the amounts from REACT-EU. Measure 3 will also be relaunched with amounts from REACT – EU. Beneficiaries who have applied for funding under Measure 3, which will be canceled, will not be restricted by eligibility criteria to resubmit their application in order to obtain grants, ” reads the draft measure of the Ministry of Investment.
In total Measure 3 received a number of 27,736 applications. According to the Ministry of European Projects, due to the lack of clear criteria, over 80% of projects received the maximum score (100 out of 100), which exceeds the financial allocation for this measure (207,091,094 euros ERDF, according to POC).
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Measures 1, 2, and 3 are part of a package of measures implemented by the government during the pandemic with the aim of helping to stay on the market those SMEs whose current activity has been affected by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or whose activity was banned or reduced by the military decrees during the state of emergency and/or during the state of alert.
Measure 1 comprised of state-aid in the form of micro-grants of 2,000 euros to each company. For Measure 1, a number of 29,250 applications were registered.
Measure 2 awards working capital grants between of 2,000-150,000 euros. So far, a number of 22,226 applications have been submitted, amounting to 5,246,397,727 lei. Given the exhaustion of the budget, only 3,945 financing contracts could be signed, according to the Ministry for Investments.
Through Measure 3 investment grants of 50,000-200,000 euros, each had to be granted. However, the measure stalled after a number of irregularities were discovered. Specifically, there were many applicants in the last two days of submitting applications, who qualified due to the fact that they “guessed” or came very close to the co-financing coefficient required to qualify. Claudiu Năsui the minister for the economy said that the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) has confirmed suspicions of fraud and has already started criminal investigations.
Translated from Romanian by Service For Life S.R.L.