Unlocking Investment to Modernize Romania’s Infrastructure

The creation of the Romanian Investment and Development Bank (IDB) marks a decisive step for the country as it seeks to close infrastructure gaps and strengthen the ability of local authorities to deliver ambitious projects. Yet municipalities face major obstacles: a lack of technical expertise, difficulties in structuring financing plans, and challenges in absorbing European funds. To address these issues, we carried out a strategic technical assistance mission aimed at laying the foundations for a system capable of supporting territories in their development efforts.

Designing a Technical Assistance Model That Builds Lasting Capacity

This mission resulted in a comprehensive roadmap for establishing IDB’s technical assistance department, defining its organization, processes, and role within Romania’s institutional landscape. We worked to design an offer that goes beyond ad hoc advice and instead focuses on building lasting local capacity: training municipal teams, facilitating project preparation, and providing operational support in financial engineering to secure access to European funding. The stakes are high: more than €60 billion in investments are needed in key sectors such as transport, energy efficiency, and social infrastructure, while Romania still struggles to fully mobilize available resources.

Helping Municipalities Access and Absorb European Funds

Beyond the technical dimension, this mission underscores the importance of cooperation between European public institutions. Collaboration with Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations and Banque des Territoires was instrumental in enriching our analysis and adapting proven French practices to the Romanian context. This synergy opens promising prospects: by capitalizing on this experience, we can explore new forms of partnership to help other countries structure their financing and territorial engineering tools.

A First Step Toward Stronger Territorial Engineering Across Europe

This work is only the beginning. The operational implementation by IDB will be a critical step toward improving the quality of municipal projects and accelerating the absorption of European funds. For us, it also sends a strong signal: by combining our expertise and strengthening ties with partners such as Banque des Territoires, we are laying the groundwork for lasting cooperation in support of territorial development across Europe.

Redacted by the Direction des Affaires Internationales et Européennes (DAIE)