Expropriations, the main hitches of infrastructure projects

Romania will enter European Union with an inadequate infrastructure, in progress of modernization thanks to many financing programs.

This reality has to be admitted by the authorities, especially since it was caused by the slowness of the works in this area. Starting 2007, there's a chance for a trend change in the slow rythm of infrastructure investments, because the EU funds alloted will show a significant increase. On the other hand, there's also the risk of coming to a standstill in infrastructure development if projects' architects and implementers don't learn from their mistakes. "The main hitches of infrastructure projects are expropriations processes. Bad timing of these expropriations causes the problem. Land plots are now taken from their owners when the projects reach the stage of technical study and it would be interesting to see if land can be expropriated way earlier, in the feasibility study stage.", said Constantin Dascalu, state secretary in the Ministry for Transport, Construction and Tourism.