The EUR 299 million scheme for zero-emission lorries and ships changes its conversion rate

The problem the order solves is a real one, even if it looks like a technical correction. A scheme whose budget is expressed in euro but whose payments are made in lei needs a conversion anchor, and the anchor chosen in 2025 was the InforEuro rate for July of that year. In the meantime, the leu equivalent of the EUR 299,000,000 had stopped matching the sum in euro that the scheme promises, and so had the equivalent of the ceiling of EUR 18 million per undertaking. Moving the benchmark to June 2026 brings the two values back close to reality, without touching any of the eligibility conditions. The order also makes a second, quieter correction: in the 2025 version the reference to the exchange rate sat in brackets at the tail of paragraph (6), and it is now a sentence of its own, which takes it out of the category of reading detail.

The solution reproduces exactly the defect it repairs, though. The new benchmark is again a fixed rate from one particular month, and on the date the order was signed, 21 August 2026, it was already two months old, almost three by publication. Any movement of the rate over the coming months puts the scheme back where it has just come from, and the remedy will again be an order rewriting the same two paragraphs in order to change the name of a month. For an act applied through successive competitive bidding procedures, as the very paragraph (1) amended here provides, anchoring to a single date is the most fragile mechanism available.

What is genuinely missing is the transitional rule. Article II carries nothing but the publication clause, so the new rate applies from 25 August 2026 to a scheme in which the budget is allocated „până la epuizare”, until exhausted, in stages. If on the date of publication a procedure was open, or applications had been filed but not yet contracted, the text does not say whether they are recalculated. More importantly, the ceiling of EUR 18 million is checked cumulatively across all the applications of the same undertaking, and a company that received aid in a call converted at the July 2025 rate and then applies in one converted at the June 2026 rate ends up with two amounts in lei calculated on different benchmarks, which somebody has to add back together in euro in order to see whether the ceiling has been reached. The order does not say how.

What should be changed

• A transitional clause instead of a bare publication rule. Article II ought to state expressly which rate applies to applications filed before 25 August 2026 and to procedures already launched. In practice, a company with a file under assessment would know whether it has to redo its financial tables or whether it stays on the rate applicable when it filed.
• A rule for checking the cumulative ceiling. The scheme ought to say that the EUR 18 million per undertaking is checked by converting each contracted amount back into euro, at the rate applicable to the call in which it was granted. In practice, a beneficiary from two different calls would know exactly how much of the ceiling it has left.
• A moving rate, tied to the call rather than to a fixed month. Paragraphs (1) and (6) could point to the InforEuro rate for the month in which each competitive bidding procedure is launched, stated in the call notice. In practice, no amending order would be needed every time the rate moves, and each call would have its own benchmark, known from the first day.
• Publication of the amounts resulting from the conversion. The documentation for each call ought to carry the budget in lei, the ceiling in lei per undertaking and the breakdown by sub-measure, calculated at the applicable rate. In practice, the applicant would no longer have to reconstruct the state’s arithmetic alone from a monthly table published somewhere else.
• A consolidated version of the scheme, published by the ministry. The annex to Order no. 756/2025 is now amended „cu modificările și completările ulterioare”, as subsequently amended and supplemented, so anyone who wants the current text has to rebuild it from several issues of the Official Gazette of Romania. In practice, it would be less likely for a file to be put together on an outdated version of the scheme.
• Reporting of the outturn against the initial estimate. The scheme starts from an estimate of roughly 900 beneficiaries, and the ministry could publish, after each procedure, the number of contracts and the sums committed. In practice, it would be visible as things go along whether the budget is being used at the announced pace or whether the ceiling of EUR 18 million is concentrating the scheme in a few large files.