Romania plans to develop its national infrastructure of alternative fuels for road vehicles and in particular the installation of at least 30,000 charging stations, by mid-2026, through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), the European commissioner for transport, Adina Valean, said on Wednesday, at an event dedicated to sustainable mobility.

"In the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, there are projects to develop the national infrastructure of alternative fuels for road vehicles and in particular the installation of at least 30,000 charging stations, by mid-2026. (...) These days, the European Commission is discussing an act to define the eligibility of alternative fuels considered to be sustainable. I hope that we will have a wider palette of accepted biofuels, so that we can increase their share and that of synthetic fuels, of course, absolutely necessary to achieve the reduction targets for carbon emissions. I believe we need to maintain and develop sustainable liquid alternatives to alternative fuels so that we can benefit from major economies of scale by using existing pipelines and fueling infrastructure so that we can decarbonize existing car fleets faster, to reduce the costs of the transition," stated Valean.

According to her, at the end of the current European cycle, the European Commission could allocate funds worth one billion euros for Romania's needs, through the Connecting Europe Facility financial instrument only.

"Romania has been performing better lately in terms of investments, thanks to a high-level Commission working group dedicated to our country, which makes me hope that, at the end of this European cycle, we will be able to allocate funds of one billion of euros for Romania's needs, only from this financial instrument Connecting Europe Facility. Of course, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the cohesion funds also contribute enough money to complete the major connections in Romania until the end of 2027. We are in a situation without precedent, in which Romania has approximately 12 billion euros available for transport. However, European funds are not only dedicated to classic infrastructure. We finance innovative solutions along the entire logistics chain, from charging stations, intelligent traffic management systems, secure parking, digitized for trucks, multimodal freight or passenger terminals.We have reserved, for example, more than 1.6 billion euros for charging stations financing projects. And Romania has already submitted five projects under the financing line for charging stations. And here we have a contribution from the European Union of 27 million euros," said Adina Valean.

The Association of Automobile Manufacturers and Importers (APIA) organized, on Thursday, the Sustainable Mobility Forum, which was attended by executives of mobility companies, representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as the Government.

The AGERPRES National Press Agency is one of the event's media partners. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Badea, editor: Oana Tilica, En - editor: Cristina Zaharia)