European funding for increasing competitiveness of member

There is a tendency of the EU’s member states of attempting to allocate more and more resources for competitiveness. The net grantor states choose the existence of more important allocations for objectives that concern the EU’s competitiveness, being – from this point of view – a tendency of abandon of the European policy for supporting the less developed member states.

This tendency is welcomed by states with powerful administrations and experience in making profitable the funds and less welcomed for other states, among which Romania, which are in a period of strengthening the administrative capacity.

Romania is favorable to a policy of European cohesion, with larger competences, but also to a component directed towards competitiveness, without loosing from sight that our country’s goal is to sustain the necessity of strengthening the “convergence” objective. Romania is preparing to absorb EU’s structural funds for increasing the competitiveness, amounted to 2,554 billion euro. The program has as priority axis the development of an innovative prductive system (31% of the amounted funds), Research-Development (R&D) and Innovation (21%), IT & Communications (ITC) (15%), energetic efficiency (25%), promoting Romania as touristic destination (5%), and technical assistance (3%). The states which joined EU in 2004 have absorbed the highest values in projects for productive investments.

It is essential for the institutes interested to benefit of support from the national and local authorities to improve the exchange of information with the local and national authorities, so that these to be informed where the European financing, granted in the area of innovation and research reach. The member states have a major role in making more efficient the usage of the European funds for research, innovation and cohesion. The representatives of the member states in the main consultative European organization in the scientific area - crest - have already elaborated a report concerning to the “way in which it can be established a better coordination in using the Framework Program and the structural funds in order to support the research and development” - a document which offers general indications regarding the access to the European funds in this domain.

For sustaining research and development in Europe, the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have joined forces and have launched at the beginning of June 2007, a new Risk Sharing Financing Facility (RSFF).

This new instrument will help to make more financing available for promoters of research & innovation projects, which often face more difficulties than traditional business sectors in accessing finance, due to the relatively high levels of uncertainty & risk inherent to their activity. The RSFF, part of the EU’s 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7) & EIB’s programme for Research & Innovation, will partially cover the financial risks assumed by the EIB when financing this type of activity. The contribution of one billion euro, each from FP7 & the EIB will therefore unlock billions of additional financing in this area.

In the support of those interested to access European funds for research and development comes the Informal Group of RTD Liaison Offices (IGLO), an unofficial non governmental organization that focuses also on match-making within FP7. Those interested of partnerships in different associations for accessing the funds FP7 can find through IGLO, organizations with similar objectives. On the site of the organization (http://www.iglortd.org/) can be accessed information and news about the financing opportunities within FP7, and also about the research-development project from EU. IGLO also offers a data base with the main institutions which coordinate the activity of research- innovation from each member state of the EU.

The European Commission (EC) has also adopted a Financing Program specifically dedicated to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), with preponderant activities in research and development.

The program named EUROSTARS is dedicated to SMEs from all those 27 member countries of EU and EUREKA, among which Romania. EC finances the program with 100 million euro, to which are added 300 million euro from the EU’s member states, according to the Framework Programme Research 7, and another value amounted to 400 million euro will be withdrawn from private sources, for financing on a period of 7 years, partnerships in the research and development areas.

EUROSTARS is administrated by the Secretariat EUREKA from Brussels, under the authority of Eurostars Group at High level, set up by representatives of the participant countries to the program.

During the last ten days of July 2007, Romania received the first structural funds from EU -75 million euro- representing the pre-financing POS Competitiveness. The pre-financing granted by the EU, represents 2% of the total value of program, in the first year of financing. Of these funds, the state covers the advance required for starting the projects elaborated by the public authorities and non-governmental organizations. It’s a great challenge, especially for the local administration, because it isn’t enough mature for elaborating public policies, meaning to identify the local priorities because, excluding the infrastructure, few Mayors focus on the competitiveness problem, inclusively jobs.

For POS CCE, the responsible authorities have established a process of evaluation and selection in three stages. The first stage aims the administrative examination of the financing files. This means that it is examined if the financing demand corresponds with the format imposed by the applicant financing guide and also if it is annexed with all the requested demands, in a certain number of copies, with all the required signatures and stamps. The second stage assumes examination of the eligibility of the organization which hands in the project (financing applicant), from the point of view of company’s category and from the point of view of the developed activity (inclusively examination of the Classification of All Activities of National Economy «CANE» indexes), of respecting the obligations of payment to the budget, respective how profitable is the business, if disposes of financial resources for co-financing etc, checking the eligibility of the project, from the point of view of being framed in what it is financed, of respecting the legislation concerning the equality between chances, public acquisitions, public help, information and publicity. If one criteria or sub criteria of these two stages it isn’t accomplished, the project is rejected from the administrative point of view, and it isn’t taken into account in the so called evaluation process, which starts once with the third stage.

In this process it follows to be used criteria in order to be determined if:

If for the first two stages, the used criteria and sub criteria are eliminatory, in the third stage there are granted points. The last stage ends with the set up of a top, corresponding with the points obtained by each company. The financing of the projects is done according to the ranking, so the selection depends of the obtained score.