PSD puts Romania’s €4.5 billion at risk

Bucharest has the Commission’s approval. It may not have the votes. On 13 July, Sorin Grindeanu, leader of PSD, Romania’s largest party, said his MPs would not automatically support the reform bills needed to unlock the country’s remaining EU recovery money (Digi24). The European Commission had approved Romania’s revised national recovery plan days earlier, followed by EU finance ministers in the Council. But approval only resets the plan. It does not move the money.

Six laws must pass through Romania’s Parliament before 31 August 2026. That is the hard cut-off for all EU governments to complete reforms under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the post-pandemic fund that pays member states only after they deliver the changes they promised (Commission closure guidance, Regulation 2021/241).

The clock as a weapon

Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan has identified six essential bills and asked for extraordinary parliamentary sessions. The package covers a public-sector wage cap, integrity rules, incentives for the tax authority and civil-service reform (Mediafax). Together, they would unlock more than €4.5 billion in grants from a revised plan now worth €20.2 billion (Agerpres, Romania Insider).

Romania received €2.25 billion in a fourth instalment in June, after the Commission checked that agreed milestones had been completed (2EU Brussels). The remaining money depends on the same laws PSD is now threatening to hold back.

Only a week before his shift, Grindeanu had called an extraordinary session "absolutely obligatory". Reform minister Dragoș Pîslaru warned that Brussels had done its part but that "the film breaks in Bucharest" if PSD refuses to vote (Digi24). PSD does not need to denounce Europe to kill the funding. It only needs to let the deadline do the work.

The same problem, different chokepoints

Romania’s blockage sits in parliament. Other EU countries are facing the same deadline through different weak points.

In Portugal, the government proposed raising the threshold for mandatory pre-approval by the Tribunal de Contas, the national audit court, from roughly €750,000 to €10 million. The argument was speed: projects have to be finished in time. The Prosecutor-General warned that the change meant weaker prevention of illegality (ECO, Jornal Económico). That bargain, faster spending for thinner scrutiny, is becoming familiar as the RRF closes.

Italy’s final RRF instalment links €28.4 billion to 159 remaining objectives. By April, only 11 had been completed (Il Sicilia). In Hungary, the revised €10 billion plan won formal approval in July, but payment still depends on anti-corruption, judicial and EPPO milestones. EPPO is the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the EU body that investigates cross-border fraud involving EU money. Formal approval can sit beside frozen cash for as long as the milestones remain unmet (HVG, Brussels Signal).

Who has to choose

The pattern across all four countries is similar. The easier milestones, procurement launches and investment commitments, were dealt with first. The harder structural reforms were pushed into the final weeks. The European Parliament had already flagged the strain, noting that only 47 percent of available RRF funds had been disbursed by the end of 2024, and that just 15 of 22 reporting member states had confirmed the money had reached final beneficiaries (European Parliament).

For Malta, this is not a distant administrative story. EU funds are domestic policy in a small member state: a rule written in Brussels can decide what gets built, audited or delayed from Il-Belt to Gozo. The RRF was meant to pay for results, not promises, and the 31 August deadline is what gives that principle weight.

But the Commission cannot make a parliament vote, a court reform itself, or an audit body move faster. If reforms fall short, Brussels has to choose between cutting payments and accepting partial delivery. Romania, where PSD can block reform without making an anti-European argument, will test whether that choice is real.