11. Substantiation Study on administrative capacity

The substantiation study on administrative capacity revealed that most of the rural TAUs in Cluj County cannot cover their current expenses from their own tax incomes. Thus, their local budgets rely extensively on transfers from the state budgets and the absorption of EU funds. Many communes and even cities did not manage, however, to get any EU funding in the last programming period.

A territorial reform (the merger of small communes, the administrative integration of suburbs in the city borders), although claimed by many specialists, is hard to implement at the moment because of different legal, cultural, political etc. barriers. A previous WB report argues such an approach is not effective in most cases.

The level of cooperation between TAUs is still low and formal, rather than voluntary, in the sense it is a precondition for accessing some EU money. Excepting the positive experience of the metropolitan public transport system, water and waste systems, this kind of cooperation is underused for interjurisdication planning. For example, the metropolitan area does not have a masterplan for the whole territory or a revolving fund for common investments.

The number and quality of public servants working in the local administration is also problematic, especially in remote rural areas. Most rural administrations have no expert in territorial planning, project planning and management or legal issues.

Digitalization is also just at the beginning for most local administrations. Thus, less than 15% of them provided basic online information and services, such as an updated website and the possibility to pay local taxes online.