Romanian authorities are trying to refresh the country’s car fleet

Romanian authorities are trying to renew the country's car fleet

Bogdan Matei, 20.03.2024, 13:50

Still poor if we compare it to other member states of the European Union, Romania has a car fleet dominated, statistically, by old and polluting cars, many of them second-hand, from the West. And, for many years, the authorities have been trying to improve the situation through the so-called Rabla car-scraping program, through which drivers are encouraged to give up their old cars and buy new ones that comply with ecological standards.

It is encouraging, for example, that the purchase of electric vehicles has continuously increased, from 39 pieces in 2016 to over 2,400 in 2020. In 2021 – over 10,000, in 2023 – over 11,000. In all these years, the authorities say, more than 38,000 purely electric cars were financed. The Ministry of the Environment in Bucharest launched, on Tuesday, the Rabla Plus 2024 program, which allocates one billion lei (the equivalent of about 200 million euros), a record amount, for electric cars and plug-in hybrids. The funds allocated for both legal entities and state institutions ran out in less than two hours after the launch of the program, according to data analyzed by the economic press.

The Rabla program for this year was inaugurated by the Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, at the Ford Otosan factory in Craiova (south), the first producer of electric vehicles in Romania.

Mircea Fechet: “And because we are discussing this budget-record of one billion lei, it correlates very well with another element of novelty, equally important, namely the fact that here, in Romania, at the Ford factory , the first electric car will soon be produced. It is extraordinary news for the air quality in Romania and it is extraordinary news for the Romanian economy in general.”

I am convinced, Minister Fechet also states, that one of the main reasons why Romanians chose to purchase an electric car was the fact that the state granted them bonuses.

The Turkish consortium is a strategic investor in the region, and one of the company’s greenest factories is the one in Craiova, said the president of Ford Otosan Romania, Mujdat Tiryaki. According to the statistics provided by the manufacturer, every 61 seconds a car leaves the gates of the factory in Craiova, where more than 1,000 engines are produced every day.

Also in Craiova, the president of the Environment Fund Administration, Laurenţiu Neculaescu, mentioned that the Rabla Classic program had turned 20 years old. During this time, the Ministry of the Environment managed to remove from circulation over one million old, polluting vehicles and over 700,000 new cars were bought. (MI)