The EU list of cross-border green energy projects rises to 15, and Romania is on it twice: Turnu Măgurele and a wind project with Ukraine

A table of 15 rows decides who may ask for European money for green energy built together with the neighbours, and Romania shows up in it twice. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1470, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L series, 2026/1470 of 11 September 2026, replaces Article 1 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/2202 and rewrites the whole list of selected cross-border projects in the field of renewable energy. The new list, in force from 1 October 2026, takes in a Romanian-Ukrainian wind integration project, while the hydraulic complex at Turnu Măgurele stays exactly where it was. On the hydropower side, the domestic legal setting moved in the summer of 2026, when hydropower developments started before 2007 were given a way out of protected natural areas.

The two Romanian entries read exactly as the regulation writes them. The first carries project number 2023-6 and the name „TMNHSA – Turnu Magurele – Nikopol Hydraulic Structures Assembly”, with Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania EAD, Bulgaria’s national electricity company, and S.P.E.E.H. Hidroelectrica S.A. as developers, and Bulgaria and Romania as participating countries. The second carries number 2025-2 and the name „Wind Integration for Network Decarbonization – WIND”, the developer entered in the table is DTEK, and the participating countries are Romania and Ukraine. Beyond that, the regulation says nothing: no installed capacity, no stage of works, no cost, no funding figure. The table has four columns, project number, project name, project developers and participating countries, and it stops there for all 15 positions.

The word that deserves attention is „new”. Recital (5) states that, following a call for proposals published on 2 September 2025 and closed on 5 February 2026, three new cross-border projects were selected, and recital (8) states that one project already on the list is being withdrawn, because its implementation will not continue in the current cross-border configuration, owing to significant challenges and uncertainties. Neither recital names any project. The published text contains only the consolidated list, in which the new entries look exactly like the old ones. A reader who opens this regulation alone cannot tell which rows were added, and therefore cannot say whether the Romanian projects are new or not.

It can be established by comparison, though, and the result is clear. The list applicable up to and including 30 September 2026 came from Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2514 of 29 July 2025, applicable from 12 January 2026, and had 13 projects. On it, position 2023-6 already existed, with the same two developers and the same two countries. The new list shows three numbers that did not exist before, 2025-2, 2025-4 and 2025-5, while position 2023-9, the „PONTIS” project developed by Iberdrola Clientes SAU and Mitsubishi Corporation, with Spain and the Netherlands as participating countries, has disappeared. The arithmetic closes: 13 projects, minus one withdrawn, plus three new ones, make 15.

Of the two Romanian projects, therefore, only 2025-2 WIND is new. The Turnu Măgurele – Nikopol hydraulic structures complex joined the list through Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/2613 of 24 July 2024, published on 1 October 2024 and applicable from 21 October 2024, when the list held 8 projects. On 1 October 2026 it has been sitting there for 710 days. The 2026 regulation leaves its developers, its countries and its number untouched. In the English version it changes nothing at all about the entry: the name reads „TMNHSA – Turnu Magurele – Nikopol Hydraulic Structures Assembly”, word for word the same as in the two earlier versions of the list. One thing does change, and it changes silently, but only in the Romanian version of the regulation: the Romanian name of the project moves from „Complexul hidrotehnic Turnu Măgurele – Nicopole”, the form used in 2024 and in 2025, to „Complexul hidraulic Turnu Măgurele – Nicopole”. Number 2023-6 and the two developers stay the same, so identification of the project does not suffer, yet in Romanian the official name of a project on the list changed without a single recital mentioning it.

On technologies, the regulation says less than it seems to. Recital (5) shows that the assessment examined the implementation of the projects through different technologies, among them geothermal energy, onshore wind and solar photovoltaic, but it ties no technology to any project. The only pointer left is the name: project 2025-2 is called „Wind Integration for Network Decarbonization”, so wind energy sits at its centre. For the other two new entries, 2025-4 „DEPLOY”, developed by ENERTRAG SE in the German-Polish border region, and 2025-5 „ZEGA-LINNK”, developed by Geothermie-Wärmegesellschaft Braunau-Simbach mbH between Austria and Germany, the three technologies cannot be matched to the projects from the published text.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is the one the Commission itself writes down, in recital (4): inclusion in the list makes the projects eligible to apply for funding under the Connecting Europe Facility. The verb matters. The status opens the right to file an application, not the right to money. Article 7(3) of Regulation (EU) 2021/1153 declares eligible for funding studies aimed at developing and identifying cross-border projects, while paragraph (4) adds, for works, two further conditions that the status does not cover: the cost-benefit analysis of the project must provide evidence of cost savings or significant benefits for system integration, environmental sustainability, security of supply or innovation, and the applicant must demonstrate that the project would not materialise without the grant, or that it would not be commercially viable without it. A project may therefore sit on the list and receive not a single euro.

The second effect is the size of the envelope, and here the figures can be worked out. Article 4(1) of Regulation (EU) 2021/1153 sets the financial envelope of the Facility for 2021-2027 at EUR 33,710,000,000 in current prices. Paragraph (2), point (b) allocates EUR 5,838,000,000 to the energy sector, of which 15 %, subject to market uptake, go to cross-border projects in the field of renewable energy, and if the 15 % threshold is reached, the Commission raises it up to 20 %. That gives EUR 875,700,000 as the starting benchmark and at most EUR 1,167,600,000 as the ceiling. Divided among the 15 projects on the list, the starting benchmark works out at an average of EUR 58,380,000 per project, a figure the regulation does not write down and one that shows the real order of magnitude of the competition. Checked, the budget components add up: 25,807 plus 5,838 plus 2,065 million euro make exactly the 33,710 million of paragraph (1).

The third effect is that the envelope is not guaranteed. Article 7(7) of the same regulation provides that, where the market does not take up enough of the funds reserved for cross-border renewable energy projects, the unused part is moved to the objectives relating to trans-European energy networks and, from 2024, may co-finance the Union renewable energy financing mechanism set up by Article 33 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1999. In other words, if the projects on the list do not file good applications, the money does not sit around waiting for them.

The fourth effect concerns the Romanian-Ukrainian project directly, and it is the only one that touches the way Romania’s green energy target is measured. Article 7(1) of Regulation (EU) 2021/1153 requires a cross-border project to be covered by a cooperation agreement between two or more Member States, or between one or more Member States and one or more third countries, as provided for in Articles 8, 9, 11 and 13 of Directive (EU) 2018/2001. Of these four, Article 8 governs statistical transfers between Member States, Article 9 joint projects between Member States, Article 13 joint support schemes, and Article 11 is the only one covering joint projects between Member States and third countries. Ukraine is a third country, so the legal basis can only be Article 11, which deals exclusively with the production of electricity from renewable sources.

The conditions in Article 11(2) are the ones that turn a paper project into kilowatts that count. Electricity produced in the third country is taken into account towards the Member State’s renewable energy share only if it is consumed inside the Union, and that requirement is deemed met only when an equivalent amount has been firmly nominated to the allocated interconnection capacity by all responsible transmission system operators, in the country of origin, in the country of destination and in any transit countries, and has been firmly registered in the scheduled energy balance by the transmission system operator on the Union side of the interconnector. The installation must also have become operational after 25 June 2009, or have been refurbished after that date, the exported electricity must not have received support from the third country other than investment aid, and production must comply with international law, in a country that is party to the European Convention on Human Rights or to other human rights treaties. Ukraine is party to the Convention, so the last condition is met; the others are checked for every megawatt hour, through capacity allocation and nomination at Transelectrica, not through an entry on a list.

The fifth effect is oversight. The Expert Group for renewable energy cross-border projects, made up of one representative of each Member State and one of the Commission, has the task, under Part IV, point 4(h) of the Annex to Regulation (EU) 2021/1153, of monitoring the implementation of the projects on the final list and recommending how delays can be avoided, while promoters are required to send information on the progress of the works. Point (j) adds the lever: a project loses its status if the information that weighed decisively in the assessment proves incorrect, or if the project fails to comply with Union law. The withdrawal of the Spanish-Dutch project in this regulation is the first example of point (h) in use: the annual progress report identified the project, the group agreed, and the position vanished from the list.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Up to and including 30 September 2026, the applicable list was the one set by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2514, with 13 projects, on which Romania appeared once. From 1 October 2026 the list holds 15 projects and Romania appears twice. In numbers, the only change that matters to a reader in Romania is the addition of position 2025-2, the project with Ukraine, since position 2023-6 passes untouched from one version to the next.

The geography of the list has changed too, in a direction worth reading off the figures. Of the 15 projects, 14 Member States appear at least once, which means 13 of the 27 appear nowhere. Germany is in 6 projects, that is in 40 % of the list. The three Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, appear together in 5 projects, and the German-Polish border region in 3, all three concerning urban district heating or the decarbonisation of industry. The two groups together cover 8 of the 15 positions, more than half. There are three third countries: Algeria and Tunisia, in the Mediterranean MedGen project, and Ukraine, through the new project. In south-eastern Europe, the only Member States present remain Romania and Bulgaria, tied to the same hydropower project.

The third thing that has changed is the pace. The list must be reviewed, under Part IV, point 4(g) of the Annex to Regulation (EU) 2021/1153, as necessary and at least once every two years. The actual updates have come more often: the list was established on 29 August 2022 and amended on 19 September 2023, on 24 July 2024, on 29 July 2025 and now on 2 July 2026, that is at intervals of 386, 309, 370 and 338 days. The rhythm is effectively annual, and a developer who misses a round does not wait two years, but around one.

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