Documented examples

Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.

Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 742 of 742 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.

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SearchCountryCapabilityStatusWith a mechanism6 of 742 deliveries

Coordination

2 deliveries linked to University-industry collaboration, Public-private collaboration.

Romaniasince 2014still operatingbears on University-industry collaboration

Proiect de transfer la operatorul economic (PTE) research-to-firm transfer grants

Romania's research funding agency UEFISCDI accepted 35 firm-led projects with research organisation partners for funding in the 2024 PTE (transfer to the economic operator) competition, plus one more on a second list, after 47 in the 2021 competition.

35 projects, pte 2024 projects on the list accepted for funding, PTE 2024 competition. 47 projects, pte 2021 projects on the list accepted for funding, PTE 2021 competition. Unitatea Executiva pentru Finantarea Invatamantului Superior, a Cercetarii, Dezvoltarii si Inovarii (UEFISCDI), Lista proiectelor PTE 2024 acceptate la finantare (PNCDI IV, Programul Parteneriate pentru Inovare), retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The national research funding agency runs a periodic competition in which a company leads a project to take a research organisation's result to market, with the state grant paying both sides under state aid rules.

Preconditions

A national R&D plan with a partnerships programme and a budget line for it
Public universities and national R&D institutes with results ready for transfer
An agency with an online submission and peer evaluation platform

Limits: The count is ours: the four-page PDF numbers its rows 1 to 35 and is a list of projects accepted for funding, not contracts signed or completed; a separate 'Lista nr. 2' adds one more project (PN-IV-P7-7.1-PTE-2024-0336), and a reserve list exists, so the contracted number may differ. The 2021 figure is the row count of a different file on the same agency site (resource-862977, 'Lista proiectelor PTE 2021 acceptate la finantare'), not at the cited URL. Each project is coordinated by a company with one or more universities or national R&D institutes as partners, and the maximum grant was about 1.5 million lei, so this is a few dozen projects a competition in a country of 19 million. PTE competitions are not annual (2019, 2021, 2024, and a 2026 call that closed on 16 September 2026 with 378 proposals submitted and none funded yet), so the gaps between rounds are part of the record. The started year is approximate: PTE ran under PNCDI III from about 2014 to 2016, which is not stated in the cited file. The figures say nothing about technology actually transferred or sold.

Romaniasince 2009operating below its peakbears on Public-private collaboration

Prima Casa / Noua Casa state-guaranteed mortgages through banks, and their wind-down

Romania's Prima Casa programme, renamed Noua Casa in 2020, had the National Credit Guarantee Fund for SMEs (FNGCIMM) issue 334,048 state guarantees and guarantee promises worth RON 31.68 billion on mortgages made by participating banks between 2009 and December 2024, but only 811 guarantees in 2024, and the ratio of guaranteed lending to banks' unguaranteed housing loans fell from about 70 percent in 2017 to about 10 percent in 2023.

10 % (circa), ratio of prima casa / noua casa guaranteed lending to banks' unguaranteed housing loans to individuals, 2023. 70 % (approx.), same ratio in 2017, the first year of the 2017-2021 strategy and the earliest year the source gives, 2017. Ministry of Finance of Romania, Nota de fundamentare for the draft Government Decision on the Noua Casa guarantee ceiling for 2025, 4 March 2025, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The finance ministry, through a state guarantee fund acting as its agent, guaranteed half or more of each first-home mortgage that participating banks underwrote, set a lower interest cap and annual guarantee ceilings, and then cut the ceilings year by year so private lending took over.

Preconditions

A guarantee fund with a mandate from the state and contracts with every major bank
Annual guarantee ceilings set in the budget law, which is the lever that also wound the programme down
A housing market where banks were willing to lend once the state took part of the risk

Where else it has been used: First-home guarantee schemes run through banks exist across Europe; Romania's is one where a crisis measure from 2009 grew to dominate the mortgage market and was then deliberately tapered.

Limits: The live file at mfinante.gov.ro did not answer a script on the day of retrieval, so the record cites the Internet Archive copy; the figures are on pages 1 and 2 of a nine-page PDF, prepared with FNGCIMM, which runs the programme, so the ministry is grading its own scheme. The decline was largely chosen: the note says the 2017-2021 medium-term strategy set falling guarantee ceilings to decelerate state intervention and that its objectives were met, while private mortgage lending without a state guarantee grew, so the erosion is a planned withdrawal as much as a loss of capacity. The 70 and 10 percent are approximate ('aprox.', 'circa') and describe a ratio of guaranteed to unguaranteed lending as the note words it, which is not the same as a market share. 2017 is the first year of the strategy, not a demonstrated peak: the note gives no earlier year, and the programme's share was probably at least as high in its first years after 2009. 811 guarantees in 2024 is a calendar-year count against a cumulative total, and the note does not give the annual peak; the 1,449 guarantees the Ministry of Finance paid out to banks since launch show the state carried real credit risk. Whether the programme raised home ownership or mainly house prices is not shown.

Learning

1 delivery linked to Adult learning participation.

Romaniasince 2002operating below its peakbears on Adult learning participation

ANOFM national vocational training plan, and its fall after 2023

Romania's National Employment Agency (ANOFM) enrolled 15,634 people in vocational training courses, skills assessment and apprenticeships under its national training plan in 2025, down from 27,843 in 2023, with unemployed trainees falling from 25,420 to 11,082 while the registered unemployment rate rose.

15,634 people, people included in vocational training, skills assessment or apprenticeship programmes organised by anofm, 2025. 27,843 people, same count two years earlier (anofm activity report for 2023), 2023. Agentia Nationala pentru Ocuparea Fortei de Munca (ANOFM), Raport de activitate al ANOFM pentru anul 2025, section III.1 Formarea profesionala, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The national employment agency sets an annual national training plan and delivers it mainly through its own regional adult training centres, free for the registered unemployed and paid for others.

Preconditions

An unemployment insurance budget that can pay course costs
A network of regional adult training centres run by the agency
County agencies that refer registered jobseekers into courses

Where else it has been used: Romania's plan targets fell with delivery (28,877 places planned for 2023, 24,440 for 2025), so the agency planned the decline as well as reporting it.

Limits: The agency reports on itself; the figure is on page 17 of a 59-page PDF, and the plan target (24,440) is on the same page. The 2023 peak is from the agency's 2023 activity report (https://www.anofm.ro/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Raport_activitate_ANOFM_2023.pdf, 27,843 people, 25,420 unemployed), and the 2024 report gives 18,859, so the fall is over two years; earlier years were not read because the 2021 and 2022 report files are not text-searchable, so 2023 is the highest year checked, not a demonstrated all-time peak. The count mixes short courses, competence assessments and workplace apprenticeships (2,257 apprentices in 2025 against 591 in 2024, so the classroom fall is steeper than the total), and counts enrolments, not completions. The registered unemployment rate is from the same reports (2.89 percent average in 2023, 3.24 percent in 2025), so the fall is not explained by fewer unemployed. Against roughly 12 million Romanians aged 25 to 64 the programme reaches about one adult in 800, so it is a delivery record, not a participation rate. The 2002 start is the year the agency's training remit was set in law (Law 76/2002), not read at the source.

Adaptability

2 deliveries linked to Institutional responsiveness, Disaster preparedness and recovery.

Romaniasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness

State-paid technical unemployment indemnity in the 2020 state of emergency

Two days after the state of emergency was declared on 16 March 2020, Romania's Government made the unemployment insurance budget pay 75 percent of base salary to employees whose contracts were suspended (Emergency Ordinance 30 of 18 March 2020), and by mid-June 2020 the employment agency ANOFM had approved the indemnity for 2,067,970 employees and paid RON 2,937 million, with 241,453 employer requests approved within the legal deadline and 61 late.

2,067,970 employees, employees for whom the technical unemployment indemnity was approved, 2020-06-15. 2,937,320 thousand lei, indemnities paid for suspended contracts during the state of emergency, 2020-06-15. Curtea de Conturi a Romaniei (Court of Accounts), special report 'Gestionarea resurselor publice in perioada starii de urgenta', August 2020, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The Government took the Labour Code's existing technical unemployment, which employers paid themselves, and by emergency ordinance moved its cost to the unemployment insurance budget for the emergency, with electronic filing and a statutory payment deadline for the county employment agencies.

Preconditions

An existing statutory form of temporary contract suspension that employers already used
County employment agencies able to process employer lists against the employment register
An unemployment insurance budget with a surplus the Government could redirect by ordinance

Where else it has been used: Most EU members ran a short-time work or suspension scheme in 2020, financed in part by EU SURE loans; Romania's was a suspension scheme rather than Kurzarbeit and reached about two million employees in three months.

Limits: The live PDF at curteadeconturi.ro returned a Cloudflare challenge to a script on the day of retrieval, so the record cites the Internet Archive copy of the same file. The figures are in a 162-page PDF: Table 9 (payments at 15 June 2020) and Table 10 (requests, beneficiaries and on-time approvals by region) on printed page 59, the 2,067,970 and the 2,483,890 employees requested on printed page 60, and the ordinance date (OUG nr. 30/18.03.2020) in the annex on PDF page 132. The audit is independent but the counts are 'date furnizate de ANOFM'. The legal deadline was the agency's own procedural one, and Table 10 counts requests, not days, so the record shows that the agency kept its deadline, not the median time to payment. 409,876 employees' requests were still pending at the cut-off. The indemnity was paid to employers, who passed it to staff; the report finds overpayments and payments to ineligible people among its RON 38.3 million of damages across all emergency spending. The scheme suspended contracts rather than shortening hours, so it is a wage replacement for idle workers, and its speed owes much to an existing Labour Code mechanism that the ordinance financed from the state budget.

Romaniasince 2004delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery

Hazard Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project: seismic retrofitting and the emergency information system

Romania's Ministry of Administration and Interior and Ministry of Regional Development completed seismic retrofitting of 44 high-risk public buildings, where about 23,350 people worked, and rolled out a modernised emergency communication system to 48 sites under a project approved in May 2004, after cutting the retrofit target from 84 buildings to 40 in 2010 and closing in June 2012 instead of December 2009.

44 buildings, public buildings with seismic retrofitting completed, 2012-10-30. 84 buildings, high-risk public buildings selected for retrofitting at appraisal, 2004-05-20. World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report, Romania Hazard Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project (P075163), December 2012, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The government used a development loan to strengthen the most dangerous public buildings in the Vrancea seismic zone and to give the emergency inspectorate a shared voice and data network, then trimmed the list as costs rose.

Preconditions

A seismic risk inventory that ranks public buildings
Counterpart budget that survives a fiscal crisis
Building codes aligned with the EU norms the designs must meet

Limits: The figures are the World Bank's, from a completion report on its own loan, in the PDO indicator table near the front of the document and the restructuring section. The report itself says there was no opportunity to test the retrofitted buildings in the absence of a major earthquake, so the record shows preparation, not demonstrated performance in a shock. The 44 exceeds a target already cut from 84 to 40 because of construction cost increases and currency depreciation, and three buildings were left unfinished when the 2010 to 2011 budgets did not cover ongoing works. The 2007 EU accession forced redesigns, and the government changed seven times in eight years. More than 350 public facilities were assessed at risk at baseline, so 44 is a small share, and the separate Bucharest programme for residential buildings at seismic risk is not covered.

Building

1 delivery linked to Large project delivery.

Romaniasince 2009still operatingbears on Large project delivery

A1 motorway, Bucharest to Nadlac

Romania's national road administration has built the 582 km A1 motorway in sections, and construction of the sections the auditors timed began in 2009, and in November 2025 the European Court of Auditors found its latest cost estimate 11 percent below the original estimate in real terms, while one EU co-funded section had run 79 months, or 263 percent of its planned time, late.

-11 % change, change in the a1 motorway's latest cost estimate against the original estimate, 2019 prices, 2025-11. 79 months, longest delay on an eu co-funded a1 motorway action against its planned completion, 2020. European Court of Auditors, Special report 02/2026, EU transport infrastructure (update of special report 10/2020), retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

Romania's national road company split a 582 km corridor into many small procurement lots and financed most of them with EU cohesion and connecting-Europe funds, which kept unit prices visible and auditable but multiplied permits and interfaces.

Preconditions

EU co-financing with audit and use-it-or-lose-it deadlines that discipline cost reporting
A national road agency able to tender and supervise dozens of separate lots
A permitting regime that, here, required a building permit every 7 km and slowed delivery

Limits: The cost figure is the auditors' aggregate of many sections planned and priced in different years, reindexed to 2019 values from an original estimate whose own date the auditors do not give, and it excludes the Bucharest-Pitesti section; the 2020 report warned that the unfinished Pitesti-Sibiu and Deva-Lugoj stretches left the figures subject to significant change. A real-terms fall can come from cheaper design, deferred scope or optimistic pricing of unbuilt sections, and the report does not say which. The auditors did not compute a schedule delay for the A1 as a whole because its timeline varies by section, and the 2020 report took 2030 as the original opening date only because the TEN-T regulation sets it, so the motorway's schedule performance cannot be read from the cost row. The 2026 update was a desk review of figures supplied by the Commission, national authorities and project promoters, with no site visits. The 79 months is one EU co-funded action, not the whole road, and it compares the Lugoj-Deva lots 2-4 action's planned end of May 2016 with an end date of December 2022 that was still a forecast in 2020. The 2020 report also found €3.7 million of EU co-funding wasted, a finished Lugoj-Deva stretch left unused and 800 metres of built motorway demolished, and one building permit needed for every 7 km.