It was published in the Official Gazette, No. 319/13.IV.2023, Emergency Ordinance 23/2023 regarding the establishment of simplification and digitization measures for the management of European funds related to the 2021-2027 Cohesion Policy.

The new normative act simplifies the method of evaluating projects, ensures the digitized development of all stages of a project and introduces interoperability mechanisms dedicated to simplifying the processes that applicants will go through to implement projects.

This emergency ordinance regulates and ensures:

• the predictability and synchronization of the calendar dedicated to the launch of project calls to avoid overlaps of calls with the same theme;
• simplifying the method of evaluating projects by introducing the single declaration that the applicant will submit together with the funding application, with all eligibility criteria being fulfilled during the contracting period, when the applicant must provide proof of what was declared through the single declaration;
• digitization of the assessment of administrative compliance;
• the technical-financial evaluation based on a small number of criteria and sub-criteria, partially digitized and automated through the interoperability of different IT systems that ensure the provision of information about the legal and financial situation of potential beneficiaries;
• setting a threshold of excellence that allows a project to be automatically selected for approval and contracting;
• streamlining and speeding up the project implementation process, including by improving MySMIS2021/SMIS2021+ functionalities and by automating certain actions in the various stages of the program/projects life cycle;
• the elaboration of the Beneficiary's Manual that includes explicit provisions, including stages, documents and any information necessary for the beneficiary in the relationship with the management authority/intermediary body, including in terms of financial management, monitoring, verification, authorization and reimbursement of expenses, both for the implementation period , as well as for the durability period;
• the introduction of the specific monitoring mechanism based on stage indicators;
• strengthening the project monitoring function at the level of the management authority/intermediary body as the case may be, drawing up a monitoring plan, part of the financing contract, which establishes a series of stage indicators on the basis of which the progress of project implementation is monitored and evaluated;
• the creation of a performance framework that ensures the accountability of the signatories of the projects, so that, in case of repeated non-compliance with the stage indicators and the plan of measures to recover the delays, deductions from the amounts allocated by the project are allowed and which can leads to the termination of contracts.
• the project monitoring process by drawing up the quarterly progress reports of the beneficiaries and of the visits by the management authority/intermediary body;
• speeding up the implementation and capitalization of interoperability and collaboration measures between authorities to increase the efficiency and simplify the activities of verifying the eligibility conditions;

This normative act defines the role of the MySMIS2021/SMIS2021+ IT system which will form the basis of the management of non-reimbursable external funds and will facilitate interoperability with the systems, databases, registers administered by the authorities and public institutions provided in the annex to the emergency ordinance.