* Companies which had a perfect operation for 20 years are on the brink of bankruptcy, because the government hasn't reimbursed the money for the projects they conducted using European funds, according to Florin Pogonaru

* Liviu Mihaiu: "Leonard Orban is an ornamental minister, who is there only for decoration, he is just doing cameos and he has no power, an that is why we are asking for his resignation"

Companies which conduct projects funded using European grants no longer want to apply, in the next financial year, for the further absorption of EU funds, due to the problems arising in the system, and especially due to the delays in the reimbursements, Florin Pogonaru, the president of the Romanian Association of Businesspeople (AOAR) said yesterday, at a press conference.

He said: "Neither I, nor the companies which are part of the Association that conduct this kind of projects will not touch the European grants for at least one cycle, until things straighten themselves out. If I could drop the projects I have ongoing, which use structural funds, without losing money, I would abandon them immediately".

According to the coalition for NGOs for Structural Funds, "at the end of September 2012, Răzvan Cotovelea, secretary of state in the Ministry of European Affairs (MAEur), said that the Ministry of Public Finance will transfer 475 million lei for POSDRU payments (ed. note: the Sectoral Operational Program - Development of Human Resources), and in the beginning of October, only 209 million lei were delivered, less than the amount which was mentioned in the public statements, and the rest was not made available to the management authority.

Approximately 1500 requests for reimbursement were not honored. Aside from those, there are also the applications filed between September 2012 and for which the contractual payment delay has been exceede