Bucharest has signed a contract for technical assistance services to plan the project, but preparations cannot begin until a master plan for city-wide integrated waste management system is completed. After public consultations on the master plan in November, some amendments were made, and a plan is set to be approved.

Three locations have been considered for the project, two of which are former assets of ELCEN – the largest producer of electric and thermal energy in Bucharest, now in insolvency and undergoing restructuring.

Media reports suggest that construction should be finalised by 2020.

Romania already faces an infringement procedure that was initiated in May 2017 when the European Commission sued the country for failing to close 68 landfills before November 2015. Planning to build this incinerator is clearly against the principles of prevention and reduction of waste.

The authorities should focus on the implementation of measures to promote the development of infrastructure for separate collection and recycling. Local NGOs claim that the inclusion of the incinerator in the National Waste Management Plan is based on a simple analysis of CO2 emissions, and does not include all emissions produced by incineration and the effects they may have on human health.

One of the goals of the project is to develop a national anti-fraud strategy for Cohesion Policy and a risk management strategy that will also include anti-fraud and anti-corruption identification and mitigation measures.

By offering the opportunity to strengthen the partnership principle and build capacity of civil society groups to take part in the monitoring process of the EU funds, the project plays an important role for ensuring that spending the future EU budget is transparent, and civil society has an important role to play in how the spending is allocated.

Trainings to date had excluded civil society groups that are not already part of official monitoring committees, meaning that only those already ‘in the know’ could participate, limiting the possibility to build others’ capacities. The importance, then, of the present technical assistance project is that it enables a greater role for civil society in ensuring EU funds deliver on their stated intentions.

The project presents a number of problems, most notably in that it contradicts other EU projects underway in Budapest aimed at recycling and composting. If recyclable and compostable waste are to be incinerated, it would need to be transported to Budapest from further afield in order to ensure enough waste inputs for the project to be economically viable.

Building such an incinerator is also much more expensive and would create much  far fewer jobs than recycling and re-use. As the waste input is low in energy content, the energy generated would be small, and nearly a quarter to one half of the outputs would be toxic and still in need of landfilling. There is also the health risk associated with air pollution from the incinerator, which would affect hundreds of thousands of people in Budapest and surroundings.

In October 2018, in the latest modification of the Annual Development Framework in the Environment and Energy Operational Programme (EEOP) – under which the Budapest incinerator project was to be funded – the project was proposed to be deleted and its funding shifted for smaller, regional water treatment projects.

Fortunately this modification was approved approved by authorities, and a December 2018 government declaration ordered the energy minister to arrange the termination of the project contract by end of January 2019. The minister is also required to look at other opportunities that fits the EEOP and that would involve the Budapest municipality. This likely means an end to the Budapest incinerator plan, which is not economically viable without EU funds. The apparent abandonment of the plan seems to be linked with the Commission’s ongoing disapproval of the project. Its position was bolstered by a recent Commission report on the poor implementation of the EU’s waste directive in central and eastern Europe, where waste treatment and incineration take precedence over waste prevention, reuse and recycling.

In the new EU budget, the Commission and the European Parliament have both proposed to direct EU funding to projects higher up the waste hierarchy, meaning that make new incinerator plans should become obsolete after 2020.