When I became mayor, the European funds absorption rate at City Hall was somewhere around 0.2%. Together with a fantastic team we have absorbed 80% of the funds, and by the end of the year we will reach 90%. We submitted new projects and signed European funding contracts worth 1 billion lei. That money is our passport to taking Timișoara into a new stage of development.
Over the past year all our work to recover the public assets of Timișoara has been in full swing. For decades those assets were plundered and used illegally by crooks. Land, buildings, historic villas are in our sights and we will go to the very end to give Timișoara back what belongs to it. Nobody and nothing frightens us any more.
We shook the foundations of a bureaucratic system stuck in last-century procedures. After three years, we have digitalised our internal working procedures. From the beginning of next year we will also have a single portal for citizens, so that they too can deal with City Hall online, if they want to.
Timișoara is a city in full development. You can see it in the private investment in Timișoara, which ranks first in the country outside the capital. You can see it in the investments City Hall itself is making.
Timișoara today is an extremely lively city, a city in the middle of a rebirth. Everyone who visits tells me that the people of Timișoara are open and quick to smile. Timișoara has become interesting to the international press and to diplomatic and business circles abroad.
Next year is the year of decisions. The European, open, lively and inventive Timișoara will run into petty egos and into a desperate attempt to drag us back in time. I have no doubt that together we will keep Timișoara on the right road. Forward, not back.
Thank you for being part of the story.
The report itself is available in Romanian only.
