Abstract

European funds are instrumental for implementing EU policies and funding a wide range of activities in various fields, one of them being agriculture. By aligning the Romanian agriculture to European standards, Romania benefited from European funds in pre-accession period (SAPARD program) and will benefit further as a full rights member of the European Union from non-reimbursable amounts allocated from the Agriculture and Rural Development European Fund. The research question is: in what extent Romanian companies are interested to access European funds for agriculture in the next years? The objective of this paper is to analyze through empirical research the views of those directly interested in accessing funds (final beneficiaries), on the conduct of EU funded projects post - accession. The results revealed that companies in Romania do not want to access EU funds for agriculture.
 
Key words: European funds, agriculture, sustainable development, financing projects, empirical research.