The 5th Regional Stakeholder Group meeting in Romania took place on June 2nd 2021. The meeting was hosted online by the Ministry of Public Works, Development and Administration (MDLPA) and moderated by DDNI. The RSG meeting was focused on the Action Plan addressing the Regional Operational Programme for the ITI Danube Delta area. 9 participants attended the meeting, of which 4 from the Ministry of Public Works, Development and Administration (MDLPA - management authority for ROP 2014-2020), 3 from the South-East Regional Development Agency (ADRSE - intermediate body for ROP 2014-2020 and management authority for ROP 2021-2027) and 2 from the Danube Delta National Institute (DDNI). An action Plan draft had been sent beforehand to the two authorities and brief feedback had been given with more questions raised, questions that were answered during the meeting as well. DDNI brought into discussion the feedback received from the Interreg Europe JS in order to have the participants opinion as well on the matters raised by JS. The Romanian Action Plan for ROP has two proposed actions:(1) Preparing a guide in support of ROP applicants in implementing sustainable and context-appropriate solutions into their projects; (2) Plan for integrating nonlisted and intangible heritage items for ROP eligibility. After the presentations, a discussion/brainstorming was started on the specifics of the actions and if/how they could be relevant for ROP. The main conclusions of the debate were the following: - The managing authority, MDLPA, said that it is not possible to bring changes to the program. The ROP 2014-2020 program is already ending soon, projects have already been financed and it isn't possible to add new indicators or refer applicants to a guide when they already have projects in course of implementation. There are no future calls for the Axes 7 and 5 that would be compatible with the Delta Lady aims. However, it was suggested to work together with ADRSE towards the ROP 2021-2027 program that is under development now, so that the Guide can be useful to new applicants; - Action two was deemed as non-feasible, due to previous experience with such intentions to finance from ROP projects related to unlisted cultural heritage. However, a suggestion was made to only keep one action, Action one, and create the Guide as a more complex document that would also incorporate suggestions for applicants to tackle the intangible cultural heritage in their projects, e.g. references to vernacular architecture ad traditional materials and techniques, where it is appropriate. In that way, the second proposed action would not be completely eliminated but integrated into a more complex single Action; - The representatives of the two authorities suggested looking at the Plans included in the Danube Delta Integrated Sustainable Development Strategy to see if any new measures or improvements can be suggested, as the DDISD is indirectly related to ROP because all projects to be financed for the Danube Delta Area must be in line with the provisions of the Danube Delta Strategy. The meeting ended with a brief recap of these conclusions and ideas to take home and an offline meeting is going to be planned as the next RSG Meeting in the next couple of months.
