Preliminary assessment of the first payment request of Romania

certain legislative acts, published in the Official Gazette no. 1240 of 29 December 2021. For cases involving foreign shareholders, final recipients/contractors are requested to sign a declaration of honour under the penalty of the law that the data is complete and correct. This should apply until the interconnection with the European Central Platform established by Art. 22(1) of the Directive (EU) 2017/1132 of the European Parliament and of the Council will be achieved and data could be retrieved directly from that Platform. Furthermore, reform/investment coordinators will have to insert provisions in future contracts which oblige final recipients/contractors to inform MIPE, in parallel with ONRC, of any change/update in their beneficial owners’ data and to re-interrogate the e_SMC system in view of their collection and storage. All those measures (i.e. legal obligations in force since 1 January 2022, together with self-declaration on honour), besides the instructions adopted on 30 August 2022, provide a sufficient level of assurance that the system will collect and store beneficial owner data in accordance with requirements of Art. 22(2)(d).

However, for past contracts, the authorities have put in place a procedure to ensure the collection of the missing data. ONRC has already contacted the Official registers of the States in which foreign companies are residents to collect and ensure reliability of data on beneficial owners, for all contracts signed until 24 August 2022. The European Commission has received copies of all these requests. Furthermore, MIPE adopted final Guidelines to reform/investment coordinators.

In order to ensure continuous compliance with the milestone and its obligations under the Financing and Loan Agreements, as attested through the updated summary document justifying how the milestone was satisfactorily fulfilled, Romania has committed to continue to develop its system to improve its functionalities and efficiency by:

   Using the European Central Platform for identifying beneficial owners of foreign companies, should it
    become available.
   In the meantime, for collecting data on foreign companies, for all past contracts signed by 24 August
    2022 ONRC will forward them to MIPE at the latest by 15.10.2022; MIPE takes the necessary actions
    to ensure data received from ONRC (in accordance with the answers received from trade registers of
    the member states where foreign companies are registered) is inserted and collected into the e_SMC
    system and will inform the European Commission by 31.10.2022.
    Commission Preliminary Assessment: Satisfactorily fulfilled

    Number: 451          Related Measure: Monitoring and implementation of the plan
    Name of the Milestone: Entry into force of a Government Ordinance enacting the legal mandate of
    the Ministry of Investments and European Project (MIPE), Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the Audit
    Authority (AA)
    Qualitative Indicator: Provision in the law indicating the entry into
    force of the Government Emergency Ordinance on the financial,
                                                                              Time: Q4/2021
    implementation, control and audit mechanism, including clear mandate
    to three institutions
    Context:

This milestone enacts the institutional framework for the national recovery and resilience plan and the activities carried out by the constituent institutions entrusting the Ministry for Investments and European Projects (MIPE) the power and mandate to exercise all the tasks of monitoring, verification, control and recovery, drawing up and signing payment applications submitted to the European Commission, the management declaration and the audit summary. The same framework entrusts as well the Ministry of Finance (MoF) with the duties in relation to the signing of the loan

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