The A3 UMB section of the Transylvanian Motorway, the entire A7 Ploiești–Focșani motorway, and both endpoints of the A8 Unirea motorway will lose financial support from the PNRR, that is, the Romanian National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The reason is that several procurement procedures encountered problems, and certain sections were not completed by the set deadlines—according to information and documents obtained by Economedia. The withdrawal of investments occurred because serious irregularities were found in obtaining and using non-reimbursable and reimbursable funds provided to Romania from the Recovery Mechanism. According to official documents, a total of twelve expressway procurement procedures—on the A3, A7, and A8 motorways—contained errors during the process. Economedia’s data shows that there were discrepancies between the information published in Romania's electronic public procurement system (SICAP) and on the official EU public procurement website (JOUE) for the tenders related to these contracts. These shortcomings mainly concern tenders announced between 2019 and 2022. One recurring issue was that, for eight construction contracts, when the procurement procedure was suspended, no official modification notice was published at the EU level.
This affected, among others, various sections of the Brașov–Târgu Mureș–Cluj–Oradea motorway, as well as separate works on the Buzău–Focșani segment. Similarly, for four other contracts, no information was published in the international system regarding changes to deadlines for submitting bids, selection criteria, or estimated values. Dragoș Pîslaru, the Minister responsible for European Union investments and projects, already previously acknowledged that they had faced obstacles in the procurement processes for several motorway sections and other investments, leading to the loss of PNRR funding—not only in projects that are physically behind schedule. Pîslaru also emphasized that they are seeking alternative sources of funding to ensure that the affected sections of the A7 and A8 motorways can still be built. At a press conference, the minister underlined that construction delays are not the cause for the affected motorway sections losing support; the issue is entirely linked to public procurement procedures. He stressed that a main point of concern was the failure to publish certain amendments in the European Union's official public procurement system (JOUE), which constitutes a violation of EU regulations. Cristian Pistol, the head of the national road administration company (CNAIR), confirmed that there was indeed a lack of consistency between the Romanian and EU procurement platforms; however, he argued that this was not solely the responsibility of CNAIR, as linking IT systems is not the duty of the contracting authorities. According to Pistol, one reason for delays in procurement procedures was responding to bidders’ questions, which is standard practice in other procurements as well. He added that now the two platforms are connected automatically, so such issues are unlikely in the future. Regarding this matter, the government emphasizes that it is doing everything possible to secure financing for the priority sections of the A7 and A8 motorways, even if this cannot be achieved from EU recovery funds.
