FINANCIAL CORRECTIONS ESTABLISHED BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR PUBLIC PROCUREMENT PROCEDURES FOR THE 2007-2013 PROGRAMMING PERIOD

The Member States and the European Commission, for the funds set for the previous 2007 - 2013 programming period have established corrective mechanisms addressing any deviations from legality and regularity, such measures being applied when any type of deficiencies related to the effective functioning of the management and control system have been identified and when individual irregularities have been identified at project level. This article aims to present these corrective mechanisms in the context of irregularities related to public procurement procedures. In Romania, it is well known that most of the irregularities found on the projects financed by the Structural and Cohesion Funds have been identified in the area related to public procurement. This phenomenon of many corrections in one area, that of the public procurement, was caused by the lack of ex-ante checks due to an inadequate institutional framework, the lack of guidance from the regulator in the field, and the failure to correlate the national and European legal frameworks. The issue remains quite current, and now that the closure of operational programs is yet to be finalized, the final balance being outstanding, the European Commission considers that the current organization does not provide enough assurance that this will not happen again. If the financial situation is accepted by the European Commission as of 31 March 2017, Romania has to reimburse Euro 256,712,276, according to the state of play presented by the Ministry of European Funds.