* The European Commission pays REPowerEU pre-financing to Romania, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia and Spain under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Today, 25 January, the European Commission paid the following pre-financing amounts related to REPowerEU funds under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF): EUR 145,1 million to Belgium and EUR 585.1 million to Croatia in the form of grants and loans; EUR 20.9 million to Cyprus, EUR 25.4 million to Finland, EUR 158,7 million to Greece, EUR 551.2 million to Italy, EUR 26.9 million to Latvia, EUR 288 million to Romania in the form of grants and EUR 340 million to Spain in the form of loans. These pre-financing will help accelerate the implementation of the main investment and reform measures presented in each REPowerEU chapter. This will accelerate the achievement of the objectives of the REPOwerEU plan for energy saving, clean energy production and diversification of energy supply, with the aim of making Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Payments made today follow the approval by the Council of the revised plans of these countries, which include a chapter on REPowerEU, and the signing of the financial agreements. Pre-financing, paid in one or two stages, represents up to 20 % of the additional funds requested to finance each country’s REPowerEU chapter. If the pre-financing is paid in two stages, the second part must be paid within 12 months of the payment of the first part.
The number of people in Romania at risk of poverty stood at 3.59 million people in 2024, 375,000 fewer than in 2023, representing a 9.4% decrease, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics, or INS. Despite the improvement, nearly one in five Romanians was affected by poverty last year. According to INS, 19% […]
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Cluj-Napoca carried out multiple searches on Tuesday, July 1, at the Sibiu International Airport and the Sibiu County Council as part of an investigation into suspected fraud involving a EUR 54 million EU-funded infrastructure project. A total of 24 locations were searched across Bucharest, Brașov, and Sibiu county, […]
A Romanian taxi driver who scammed 90-year-old Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka was detained by police on Sunday, June 29, according to media reports. On Friday, June 27, the venerable Nigerian arrived at Bucharest's Otopeni Airport. He got into a taxi and asked to be taken to a hotel downtown. At the destination, the […]
Costin Șerban, a Romanian entrepreneur, is digitalizing the construction sector in the United Kingdom with an ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution developed over 12 years and an investment of GBP 1.6 million (EUR 1.86 million). Șerban’s cloud-based ERP platform is called Abilo, was developed by the Romanian IT company Obi Systems, and is dedicated to […]
Border checks between Bulgaria and Romania have officially been lifted on July 1, as part of the implementation of the Schengen Agreement. The lifting marks the end of the transitional period of heightened control at the internal border, which had remained in place for six months following their accession to the Schengen area by land […]
Remus Vulpescu became CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) on Tuesday, July 1, taking over from Adrian Tănase as the stock exchange grapples with a market dominated by government bonds. Vulpescu, 53, is a graduate in political and legal sciences from the University of Bucharest and holder of an EMBA obtained in 2017. He […]
