The World Bank has closed the financing for the Bucharest justice quarter, and the State is repaying 2.2 million

The decision opens nothing, it closes. It puts on record that the line of financing the World Bank had made available to Romania in 2019 to prepare the „Cartierul pentru justiție” ran out without the project ever reaching the stage of the loan proper. The figures tell the story better than any commentary: the advance was exactly 2,500,000 dollars, because the amount drawn and still to be repaid, 2,059,266.34, plus the balance cancelled on 30 November 2025, 440,733.66, come to precisely that. In other words, eight tenths of the advance went on documentation, and the rest was cancelled when the account was closed. From 1 June 2026 to 1 December 2030 the State pays back the part that was spent, in ten half-yearly instalments.

The structure of the schedule is worth explaining, because it does not look like an ordinary loan. The interest does not fall as the principal is repaid, it stays fixed, 20,721.12 at every due date. The reason is that no interest is charged on the outstanding balance; what is spread out is the interest already accrued by the time the account was closed, 207,211.22, divided into ten equal parts. That way of dividing is also where the two cent difference in the total row comes from. The same annex, though, has a more serious gap than the rounding: not one column carries the currency. That dollars are meant can be worked out only from the Bank’s letter of 4 December 2025, the single place in the act where USD appears, and payment is made from the State budget, in lei, at an exchange rate the act neither fixes nor points to.

The second thing that catches the eye is the institutional calendar. The exchange of letters was completed on 24 April 2026, and the first instalment fell due on 1 June 2026. The decision that approves the amendments and that, in Article 2, settles where the accrued interest is paid from, was adopted on 20 August and published on 25 August 2026. Between the due date and the legal basis for payment lie almost three months in which the Ministry of Finance either paid without the decision being in force, or did not pay. The act does not say which of the two happened and carries no mention of any late payment interest, although the schedule is issued by the creditor and the due dates are fixed.

What is left, finally, is the complete silence about the object. The 2,059,266.34 dollars drawn financed studies, design work and documentation for a judicial campus in Bucharest. The decision does not say what was produced with that money, nor who holds the result, nor whether the documentation is still usable if the project comes back in some other form. An act that closes a preparation financing ought to leave exactly that information behind, because it is the only thing that can turn a lost expense into an asset.

What should be changed

• An annex with an inventory of the documentation paid for out of the advance. The decision ought to list the studies and designs financed from the 2,059,266.34 dollars drawn, naming who holds them and where they can be consulted. In practice, a revival of the project would start from what already exists, and the public could see what it bought with this money.
• The currency and the exchange rate, written into the schedule. Annex 1 ought to carry the currency on every column and to say at what rate the amounts are converted when they are paid from the State budget. In practice, the payment made by the ministry could then be compared row by row with the creditor’s schedule.
• A deadline for approving the amendments, tied to the first due date. Where an exchange of letters fixes a payment schedule, approval by Government decision ought to come before the first due date, not three months after it. In practice, the budgetary basis would exist at the moment the money has to be paid.
• A statement about the payments already made. The act ought to say whether the instalment due on 1 June 2026 was paid and on what terms. In practice, it would then be known whether the State has run up late payment costs on a schedule the creditor treats as firm.
• A public record of the preparation advances in progress. The Ministry of Finance could publish periodically the list of advances of this kind, with the amount contracted, the amount drawn and the state of each one. In practice, the cancellation of a 2.5 million dollar line would no longer become public only through a decision appearing nine months after the account was closed.