Deputy PM Barna: Romania must stop being Europe's used car circuit

The Romanian government aims to discourage the purchase of old cars, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Barna said at a news conference in Iasi on Thursday. He added that "Romania must stop being Europe's used car circuit." "Among the commitments made in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) in this area, we are talking about the naval transportation strategy, we are talking about the road safety strategy, we are talking about the way of taxing the heavy cargo shipping and we are also talking about an objective related to discouraging the purchase of used cars. Romania must stop being, I don't know how to say it, Europe's used car circuit, so that it may have a cleaner environment, because part of the pollution comes precisely from the fact that we have very old cars in an ageing car fleet," Barna said. He said that "PNRR is currently being negotiated with the European Commission in order to reach the final option that will be adopted somewhere towards the end of this summer." "Under this plan, we are talking about 7.6 billion euros, the largest amount of recovery programmes approved at European level, the largest amount allocated to infrastructure and that is a success, I dare say, in terms of European funding through recovery and resilience and I want to congratulate Catalin Drula for the consistency of the programme sent to Brussels that has 3 billion euros for the roads and 3.8 billion for railways area, and from this resource, the railway and especially the road infrastructure, an important part comes to Moldavia, with the two sections of motorways included in the programme, A7 and A8. It is a priority for this railway system to become operational again, to become efficient again in terms of travel time and all the investment considered. (...), on the one hand, all these investment projects are designed to electrify important parts of the existing network and to upgrade them, so that traffic speed increases by up to 30%, so that, once again, travel by rail may become efficient and interesting again," added Barna. AGERPRES (RO - author: Cristian Lupascu, editor: George Onea; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)