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Good practice Imported

Digitalisation Grants for SMEs — Romania's PNRR Digital Adoption Scheme

Romania · Bucharest · See the Romania profile · See the Bucharest profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 95% 43/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Romania's National Recovery Plan offered SMEs grants of €20,000–100,000 for digital adoption; 7,188 firms applied in 2023 for a €350m fund, but by mid-2025 only 2,828 (53% of target) had signed contracts — a cautionary case in recovery-fund delivery.

350 EUR million
Programme budget (2023)
20,000–100,000 EUR
Grant size range (per company)
7,188 companies
Companies applied (Feb–Jun 2023)
5,384 companies
Initial contracting target (n/a)
2,828 companies
Contracts signed by April 2025 (as of April 2025)
52.5 %
Share of contracting target reached (as of April 2025)
5,200 projects (roughly)
Projects admitted (approval lists) (as of April 2025)
1,900 projects (roughly)
Projects rejected (as of April 2025)
1,257 projects
Projects completing SME-category verification (as of April 2025)
231 requests
Payment-transfer requests submitted (as of April 2025)

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of Investments and European Projects (MIPE)
Period
2023–2026
Region (NUTS)
RO321
Keywords
SME digitalisation, ICT adoption, recovery and resilience funding

Context

Under Component 9 of Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) — support for the private sector, research, development and innovation — the Ministry of Investments and European Projects (MIPE) opened a digitalisation grant scheme for SMEs, with a budget of roughly €350 million and grants of €20,000 to €100,000 per company for digital tools such as ERP systems, e-commerce platforms, cybersecurity and cloud services.

Activities

Applications ran from 15 February to 30 June 2023. A separate 'advanced digitalisation' track required non-IT SMEs to partner with IT firms.

Results

7,188 companies applied against an initial contracting target of 5,384. By April 2025 — nearly two years after the application deadline — only 2,828 contracts had been signed, 52.5% of that target. Seven lists of approved projects (roughly 5,200 admitted) and four lists of rejected projects (roughly 1,900) had been published, 1,257 projects had completed SME-category verification, and only 231 payment-transfer requests had been submitted by beneficiaries.

Conclusions

The scheme is a documented case of a large recovery-fund digitalisation voucher programme running well behind its own contracting and disbursement targets. It offers other programmes a concrete caution: budget approval and application volume are not proof of delivery, and administrative capacity for contracting and payment processing needs to be planned for explicitly. Public evidence to date covers programme throughput rather than measured business outcomes.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — €350 million budget; grants of €20,000–100,000 per company.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Applications February–June 2023; contracting still incomplete as of April 2025, well behind schedule.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Investments and European Projects (MIPE)

Conditions for success

  • Administrative capacity for contracting and payment processing needs to be planned for explicitly
  • Clear eligibility rules (advanced-digitalisation track required non-IT SMEs to partner with IT firms)

Common failure modes

  • Contracting and disbursement fell well behind targets — only 52.5% of the contracting target signed nearly two years after the application deadline
  • Budget approval and high application volume did not translate into timely delivery

Where it fits

Governance type
national ministry administering EU recovery funds
Scale
national
Income level
high-income (EU member)

Commonly funded by

Recovery and Resilience Facility (national plans) National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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