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Romania’s PM Ilie Bolojan built his political brand on one promise: he knows how to handle EU money. He doesn’t.
Ilie Bolojan, the self-entitled efficient administrator, the NRRP whisperer, the guy who would finally make sure Romania doesn’t waste another euro of European cash. Yet here we are in April 2026, and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), led by Laura Codruța Kovesi no less, has just opened a formal investigation into one of the most blatant PNRR scandals to date: the acquisition of overpriced electric school minibuses. And the trail, according to investigative reporting that sparked the whole thing, leads straight back to Bolojan himself.
Let’s rewind to 2023, when the “Electric Minibuses for Students” project launched under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Brussels earmarked roughly 230 million euros to buy up to 3,200 clean, modern minibuses for Romanian schoolkids. The European Commission’s own estimate? Around 78,000 euros each. Straightforward, right? Fast-forward to 2024. Ilie Bolojan, then freshly re-elected president of Bihor County Council, steps up to the microphone and proudly announces that his county will purchase 24 of these electric buses. He didn’t just participate, he effectively set the national “tone” for how these tenders would be run. By February 2025, under his successor Mircea Mălan, Bihor had signed the deal: 22.8 million RON, or roughly 218,000 euros per bus. That’s nearly three times the EU benchmark.
And Bihor was no outlier. County after county followed the same script. Olt County shelled out the equivalent of 262,000 euros per bus, so 3.4 times the recommended price. Similar mark-ups hit Prahova, Mureș, Gorj, Satu Mare, and beyond. One company, Aveuro International from Prahova, walked away with over 60% of the contracts and an estimated 135 million euros in revenue. The math is grotesque. Only about 1,300 buses were ultimately bought instead of 3,200, yet the money hemorrhaged at premium rates. Tenders were allegedly rigged and rival bids rejected on technicalities, prices mysteriously aligned just below inflated estimates. The minibuses themselves? Some counties reported them failing spectacularly in cold weather, batteries draining after a few dozen kilometers, forcing schools to dust off old diesel vehicles. One mayor’s viral quote said it all: “When temperatures dipped to minus 10 or 12, the electric fleet simply couldn’t cope.”
By June 2025, Ilie Bolojan had climbed to Prime Minister. Suddenly he’s the national face of NRRP discipline, publicly berating ministers, warning of firings if absorption rates slip. He loves to pose as the adult in the room, the one who will finally unlock the remaining billions Brussels still owes us. Yet under his watch, and with his earlier fingerprints all over the minibuses file, Romania is staring down the barrel of losing several billion euros from the very program he claims to champion. Romania’s total NRRP envelope was renegotiated down from 28-29 billion to about 21 billion euros after dropping some loan components. We’ve drawn roughly 10.7 billion so far. That leaves around 10 billion euros still to be claimed by the August 31, 2026 deadline. Each critical reform that slips could trigger penalties running into the hundreds of millions, even close to a billion euros. We’ve already forfeited 231 million euros on a pensions-related reform that didn’t meet the bar. Payment requests 3 and 4, worth about 3 billion, are due by the end of this month, and the clock is ticking.
Think about what that waste means in human terms. Every overpriced minibus is money that could have gone to actual classrooms, better roads, or energy projects. Every lost billion from the broader NRRP pot is another hospital wing unbuilt, another digitalization delay, another rural school left behind. Romanian taxpayers, the ones who will still be paying back the loans portion for decades, get stuck with the bill. This isn’t just about a few dozen overpriced yellow buses. It’s about trust. The one commodity Romania can least afford to lose when it comes to European money. If the EPPO finds wrongdoing, the guilty must face real consequences, no matter how high their office. Because if even the self-appointed guardian of the NRRP can’t keep the funds clean, what hope does the rest of the program have?
The investigation is just beginning. The real test will be whether anyone actually pays for the “national heist” that left our kids riding cold, expensive ghosts of what could have been.