Romania’s local development programme: no completion certificate at the ministry for 1,992 projects contracted in 2015–2020

What “not signed off” means#

Before Anghel Saligny, Romania paid through PNDL (Emergency Ordinance 28/2013) for works in almost every commune and town. The town hall or county council hires the builder, and the ministry sends the money in instalments as the works advance. When the builder finishes, a committee of the town hall or county council signs the completion certificate (proces-verbal de recepție la terminarea lucrărilor) and sends it to the ministry.

Since 2023 the ministry has published, every six months, a list of every project still in the programme; in June 2026 it held 11,479 contracts signed between 2015 and 2020, with the sum allocated, the sum settled and the year of sign-off. If the sign-off cell is empty, the ministry notes, it has received no certificate; “the project may be finished” without the town hall having told it.

So before any count, the question was how fast the paperwork follows the end of the works. Between December 2022 and June 2026, 1,982 projects were signed off. For four in five of them, the completion year in the list was the reporting year itself or the year before; one in five arrived only in the second calendar year after completion, or later. Usually, then, the paper comes quickly. The test has a limit, though: a finished project whose certificate never reaches the ministry never appears in it. How many of the 1,992 projects are done but unreported, the lists cannot say. What they can show, further down, is where money is still moving.

525 of these contracts were signed in 2015 and 2016#

PNDL’s first stage covers the contracts signed in 2015 and 2016. On 30 June 2026, 359 projects from 2015 and 166 from 2016 still had no sign-off. The state had paid 2.19 billion lei on them. In December 2020, Emergency Ordinance 214/2020 allowed first-stage contracts without sign-off to be extended by up to two years.

The second stage, with contracts from 2017–2020, has 1,467 projects without sign-off. Age does not help: the open projects from 2015 have, at the median, 88% of their money paid, those from 2018 95%. An eleven-year-old contract is no nearer the end than an eight-year-old one.

674 of them have been paid almost in full#

Of the 1,992 projects without sign-off, 1,162 have received at least 90% of their allocation and 674 at least 99%. Payment and sign-off run separately: a project can be paid in full without the ministry holding its certificate.

What happened in the last two years says more than the percentage. Between June 2024 and June 2026, 863 projects without sign-off still received money: there, the works or the paperwork are still moving (for another six, the settled sum fell). For 318, almost everything (at least 99%) had been paid and nothing moved; these are most likely finished works whose certificate never reached the ministry. For 148, the state had paid less than half and paid nothing more in two years: these look like stalled works.

Sign-offs are coming ever more slowly#

The shrinking list shows how fast the programme is closing. In the first half of 2023, 337 new sign-offs appeared; in the last year, July 2025 to June 2026, only 219. The peak at the end of 2024 (752 sign-offs) has not recurred.

If last year’s pace held, it would take about nine more years for all 1,992 projects to be signed off. That is simple arithmetic, not a forecast: some of the works are probably finished already, and others may never be.

Schools, kindergartens, clinics and water networks#

Most of the projects without sign-off are water and sewer networks (598) and roads or bridges (571). But the list also holds 420 schools, 246 kindergartens and nurseries, and 108 health units: village clinics, medical centres and hospitals.

A separate case is the schools listed “without ASF”, meaning without a fire safety permit. PNDL financed 1,323 projects at schools listed in this category. For 281 of them, the ministry had no sign-off in June 2026.

143 projects have left the programme since 2022#

The current list keeps only projects still in the programme. Comparing the December 2022 list with June 2026 (with five contract numbers corrected in the meantime linked to their projects), 143 projects left, with 409.2 million lei allocated. Most were schools (38) and kindergartens (34). Almost half (71) are flagged in an earlier list before they go: “no longer included in the programme”, “objective dropped”, “termination agreed”. On 15 of them, 1.5 million lei had been paid by December 2022; for eight, the settled sum falls to zero before they leave, and one is marked “sum returned”.

The payments match the lists#

The ministry publishes each PNDL payment round separately: 143 tables between March 2020 and October 2026, worth 23.7 billion lei. They give the sum per town hall, not per project. Added up between two status lists, the payments account for between 90% and 111% of the rise in settled sums in every interval. Over 2025 as a whole, payments and the rise match almost exactly.

The one problem sits in the December 2023 list, where the settled sum falls for hundreds of projects and recovers six months later. That list is not used for money. Payments go on: between July and October 2026, the ministry paid another 349 million lei under PNDL.

Every commune, with its own list#

1,003 of Romania’s 2,730 communes with PNDL projects have at least one without sign-off. Search for a commune or town, or click the map: the record shows every project, its contract year, how much was paid and whether the sum moved in the last two years. County councils and Bucharest districts are found through the search only.

Method and sources#

The data are the eight PNDL implementation-status lists published by the Development Ministry from December 2022 to June 2026, joined on the financing-contract number, plus every PNDL payment round from March 2020 to October 2026. The tests were fixed before they were run: how fast sign-off follows the end of the works (completion year against reporting year), age against share paid, projects that did not move in two years, and projects that left the programme.

21 rows were left out: 17 projects taken over by the Regional Operational Programme, one contract not extended, three new projects requested by the Defence Ministry (Ordinance 6/2025), two of them in Brașov and not yet contracted. An independent check of the data found two calculation errors before publication, corrected here: total rows in four payment tables read as payments to the last county listed, and five contract numbers corrected by the ministry read as projects that left the programme. The share paid is measured against today’s allocation, which rose for some projects after Emergency Ordinances 47/2022 and 105/2023. Thirteen projects went from “finished” back to an empty cell between two lists.

The lists show a missing document, not missing works. The completion certificate is a paper the town hall sends to the ministry; its absence means only that, as far as the ministry knows, the works are not complete. Whether any project was not built, whether money was misused and who is responsible are questions the lists cannot answer.

Data downloads

• Every project, with status and payments (CSV)
• Every commune and town (CSV)

Sources

1. Development Ministry: PNDL implementation status, eight lists, December 2022 – 30 June 2026 mdlpa.ro
2. Development Ministry: PNDL payments made, 2020–2026 (current page and yearly archives) mdlpa.ro
3. Emergency Ordinance 28/2013 approving PNDL, consolidated (including EO 214/2020, art. II) legislatie.just.ro
4. Commune outlines: geo-spatial.org, after ANCPI geo-spatial.org