The European Commission recommended Romania to work on the contents of the Partnership Agreement especially at Transports and Competitiveness, said Commissioner for Agriculture Dacian Ciolos yesterday in Bucharest during a press conference, reports Mediafax. The European Commissioner for Agriculture said that, during the informal contracts between Romania and the European Commission on the Partnership Agreement, the European executive “insisted on the quality of strategy elaboration process to be negotiated in the Partnership Agreement, rather than on the schedule.” “Obviously the schedule becomes important at a certain point, in the sense that no major delays should occur, but the quality and contents of strategies are much more important for the EC,” said Ciolos.
Regarding the agricultural strategy, Ciolos said that, during his latest visit to Romania, the Ministry of Agriculture had the document ready and was to send it. “I insisted that they should continue with the public consultation, to make sure the expectations of the possible beneficiaries should be found inside the body of the document,” said the European official. The European Commission criticized the first version of the Partnership Agreement, which they labeled as “incoherent and with no clear-cut priorities.” The European experts warned that the lessons learnt between 2007 and 2013, when Romania had European funds available which they could not take however, should be capitalized better, focusing on their own ability to reach targets and insist on the fact that the definition of the funding priorities is often too vague or general to understand the proper purpose of the action, and the list of priorities is too large in a “seeming endeavor” to meet all sector necessities.
On other topic, European Commissioner for Agriculture Dacian Ciolos said, upon answering to a question, that he was not formally proposed a new mandate within the European Commission.
