Romanian Construction Bosses Demand Payment in Cement Mixers as €3 Billion Hole Swallows National Recovery Plan
Federația Patronatelor Societăților din Construcții reports a €3 billion gap between work done and cash received, prompting builders to accept payment in asphalt and demand that the government hand over the entire PNRR budget in wheelbarrows.
BUCHAREST — The Federația Patronatelor Societăților din Construcții (FPSC) announced today that its members will accept payment for completed National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) works exclusively in physical construction materials, after discovering a €3 billion difference between the value of roads, bridges and water networks already built and the money actually received from the state.
Under the new system, which takes effect immediately, every contractor in the country will be paid in kind: a kilometre of motorway earns a tonne of cement, a renovated school earns a pallet of bricks, and a finished hospital wing earns a fully fuelled excavator. The FPSC has also begun converting its Bucharest headquarters into a giant warehouse where government representatives are expected to deliver the first instalment of 9.45 billion euros in cash, stacked on wooden pallets, by the end of the week.
«We have informed the Ministry of European Funds that from now on we will measure progress not in signed documents but in truckloads of gravel arriving at our gates,» said a federation spokesman, speaking from a freshly paved roundabout that his company built and has not been paid for. «If the state cannot find the money, it can start by handing over the asphalt plant on the ring road. We will consider the debt settled when the last lorry leaves.»
The government has responded by ordering all ministries to surrender unused office furniture, which will be crushed and mixed into concrete for the next phase of PNRR works. Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan has reportedly asked the finance minister to calculate how many paper clips equal one kilometre of sewer pipe, while the Jandarmeria has been placed on standby to guard the first convoy of cement mixers heading to the FPSC depot.
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