Romania and Bulgaria: EUR 103.69 million EU Connecting Europe Facility grant for \"CARMEN\" cross-border smart grid project

Mechanism

CARMEN is a cross-border Project of Common and Mutual Interest (PCI/PMI) linking Romania's electricity grid operators (Delgaz Grid SA, a distribution operator, and Transelectrica, the national transmission system operator) with Bulgaria's Elektroenergien Sistemen Operator EAD (ESO), the Bulgarian TSO. The EUR 103.69 million CEF Energy grant funds "works" — physical smart-grid infrastructure — to increase renewable energy source (RES) integration capacity and cross-border interconnectivity in the South-East Europe (SEE) region. It is part of the same 28 January 2026 CINEA funding round (14 projects, ~EUR 650 million total) that produced several other CEF Energy actions already in the register (e.g. the Slovakia Čierny Váh pumped-storage grant and the Germany/Netherlands CEF hydrogen grants). Grant certificates for CARMEN and two other projects in this round (AGUAYO II in Spain, RWE Hydrogen Storage Gronau-Epe in Germany) were formally presented at the CINEA Energy Infrastructure Forum on 21 May 2026. Severity is set at 2/5: EU development-grant financing for shared grid-balancing infrastructure, consistent with the severity level assigned to sibling grants in this same funding round.

Downstream implications

• Adds to the 2025-26 wave of EU/CINEA CEF Energy infrastructure grants

building the grid-balancing and interconnection layer of the Western industrial-policy stack, alongside the Slovakia, Germany and Netherlands CEF grants from the same 28 January 2026 round.

• Strengthens Romania-Bulgaria electricity interconnection capacity,

relevant to SEE renewable-energy buildout and grid resilience.

Open questions

• No public breakdown yet of the individual cost shares among Delgaz

Grid SA, Transelectrica and ESO within the EUR 103.69 million total.

• Expected completion/commissioning date for the CARMEN works is not

disclosed in the primary source.