European Report

The European Commission has made public a list of country-specific recommendations.

Corina Cristea, 03.06.2014, 13:23

Against the backdrop of a visit to Bucharest by international lenders to review Romania’s standby agreement, the European Commission has made country-specific economic policy recommendations to Member States, helping them out of the crisis and back to economic growth. Romania submitted a set of planned reforms and convergence programmes in early May. The European Commission carefully analyzed the documents and issued a total of eight recommendations for Bucharest authorities.

They are related to implementing the financial assistance programme coordinated by the EU and the IMF, implementing the budgetary strategy for 2014, stepping up reforms in the healthcare sector, strengthening active measures of employment on the labour market, increasing the quality and access to vocational education and training. Moreover the Commission recommends to Romania to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of social transfers, step up efforts to strengthen the capacity of public administration and promote competition and efficiency in the field of energy and transporation.

In the field of taxation, the European Commission recommends that Romania improve tax collection by stepping up efforts to reduce VAT fraud, combat undeclared work and finalize the pension reform started in 2010. At the level of public administration, Romania needs to increase the efficiency, transparency and integrity of its system, while the fight against corruption should continue in the justice system, particularly with a view to ensuring the effective implementation of court rulings. In the field of energy and transportation, Romania should promote competition and efficiency and speed up corporate governance reforms of state-owned companies.

At present, our country is finalizing the implementation of the second EU/IMF economic adjustment programme. EU funds might be an important source of public investment to support Bucharest in tackling the challenges. This year the European Commission has issued recommendations for 26 countries, with the exception of Greece and Cyprus, which are currently implementing economic adjustment programmes. Economic growth is back on track in most EU crisis-hit states. Experts expect only Cyprus and Croatia to see their economies shrink this year, president Barroso also added. Country-specific recommendations will be discussed at the EU summit in June and adopted at the meeting of EU Finance Ministers of July 8.