39% of the first stage of Ungheni's Lake Delia promenade comes from Cluj

The Local Council of the municipality of Cluj-Napoca approved on 20 July, in an extraordinary session, with 24 votes, the co-financing of the first stage of the promenade on Lake Delia in Ungheni. Decision number 527 allocates 593,000 Romanian lei (RON) from the Cluj local budget for 2026, and Ungheni city hall announced the decision on Tuesday, 28 July, in a post that speaks of “100 thousand euros” and of a project worth “about 6 million Moldovan lei”.

The public documents — the Cluj decision, the financing agreement annexed to the decision of the Ungheni Municipal Council and the tender file — show the exact figures, the structure of the money, what is actually being built and a timeline that starts in December 2025.

How much Cluj gives and how much Ungheni pays

The financing agreement, approved as a model by Decision 4/5 of 15 May 2026 of the Ungheni Municipal Council and annexed in full to the act published in the State Register of Local Acts, sets the sums down to the last decimal:

• the total value of stage I, including technical supervision services of 1.1%: 288.387,80 euros;
• the share of Cluj-Napoca city hall: 593.000,00 Romanian lei, that is 113.247,88 euros;
• the share of Ungheni city hall: 175.139,92 euros.

The ratio between them does not depend on any exchange rate, because both are expressed in euros in the document itself: the Cluj share represents 39.3% of the first stage, while Ungheni covers 60.7%. At the official rate of the National Bank of Moldova for 29 July — 20.1016 Moldovan lei to one euro — the whole of stage I means about 5.8 million Moldovan lei, and the Cluj contribution about 2.28 million Moldovan lei.

The financing structure of the first stage and a reconciliation of the public figures. The sums in euros and the percentages come from the Financing Agreement; the value of the contract, from the award decision. Adding up VAT and technical supervision is our own calculation — the itemised bill of quantities is not published. Chart: Triunghi.md. Source: Decision 4/5 of 15.05.2026 of the Ungheni Municipal Council (the Financing Agreement), Decision 527/2026 of the Cluj-Napoca Local Council, contract award decision no. 21 of 11.05.2026 (MTender), the National Bank of Moldova exchange rate of 29.07.2026.

The figure of “100 thousand euros” in the public announcement is therefore smaller than the one in the signed document: the agreement sets 113.247,88 euros, more than 13,000 euros more, in Ungheni’s favour. The difference does not come from a currency fluctuation — the cross rate implicit in the agreement, of 5.2363 Romanian lei to one euro, is practically identical to the one that follows today from the rates of the National Bank of Moldova, 5.2308. It is a rounding down, made in the communication: the sum that actually binds the parties, the 593,000 Romanian lei, is the same in the announcement and in the act.

The money does not come up front, but against invoices

The least visible part of the agreement is also the one that changes the meaning of the word “financing”. Cluj does not transfer a sum on signature. Under articles 5 and 6, Ungheni city hall has to submit a payment request accompanied by a justification report and by financial documents confirming that the works have been carried out — the works contract, the tax invoice and the acceptance report. Only then does Cluj-Napoca transfer the money, in Romanian lei, within 30 days.

The agreement goes further: the applicable law is Romanian law; money left unspent is returned within one month of the completion of the project; and if an independent audit, requested by the financier in Romania, finds that the sums were spent for another purpose, they are recovered, including by reducing the financing. Ineligible costs and any additional works that come up along the way fall, under decision 4/5, to Ungheni city hall, which also undertakes to adopt the decisions allocating the additional sums.

The Cluj mayor insisted, according to the announcement of Ungheni city hall, on the distinction between financing and co-financing:

a small piece there where the projects of Ungheni city hall still need co-financing Emil Boc, Mayor of Cluj-Napoca, quoted by Ungheni city hall

The statement was reproduced by Ungheni city hall, which also quotes his point that the money is allocated “in a transparent, very clear manner, so that we can show that, beyond words, concrete things are also happening in our relationship”. Both readings of the sum are correct, but they measure different things: set against the budget of a city the size of Cluj, the sum is small; set against the works in Ungheni, it is almost two-fifths of them.

Which budget line makes the transfer possible

The Cluj decision states precisely where the money comes from: chapter 51.02 — public authorities and external actions, item 55.02.04 — “Other current transfers abroad”, from the rectified general budget of the municipality for 2026.

The legal basis is article 35¹ of Law no. 273/2006 on local public finances in Romania, with the procedure approved by joint order 1120/2014 and 1030/2014, amended in 2018. All three conditions are visible in the acts of this very file: the Cluj decision invokes the 2016 Cooperation Understanding, allocates the sum from a line of the rectified 2026 budget, and the financing agreement makes payment conditional on supporting documents. On the Moldovan side, the decision rests on article 14 of Law no. 436/2006 on local public administration.

Seven months from the request to the vote

The documents allow the whole path to be reconstructed, and it begins well before the announcement.

The request of mayor Vitalie Vrabie was registered at Cluj-Napoca city hall on 16 December 2025, under number 942391/105. In April 2026, Ungheni city hall put the works out to tender; when an economic operator asked, in a clarification request of 11 April, what the source of financing was, the contracting authority replied on 13 April that the source is the local budget. The bids were submitted on 29 and 30 April. On 15 May, the Ungheni Municipal Council adopted decision 4/5, formally requesting the 593,000 Romanian lei and approving the model agreement. On 16 July the mayor’s approval memorandum and the specialist report were registered in Cluj, and on 20 July the council voted.

The chronology also explains why the local budget was the answer given during the tender: the request to Cluj had been filed back in December, but the co-financing was approved only in May and in July, as partial cover for the same works. The financing agreement is valid until 31 December 2026.

The contract: 5.76 million Moldovan lei, awarded to Balt-Cons of Pîrlița

The tender — “Works to develop the dike (promenade) on Lake Delia in the municipality of Ungheni” — was an open procedure, with an estimated value of 5,067,100 Moldovan lei excluding VAT. Two firms submitted bids, both from Ungheni district: SRL Balt-Cons, from Pîrlița, with 4,800,000 Moldovan lei, and SRL Aedificator, from the municipality of Ungheni, with 4.978.690,64 Moldovan lei.

Through contract award decision no. 21 of 11 May 2026, the contract went to the lower bid, that of SRL Balt-Cons: 4.799.736,14 Moldovan lei excluding VAT, that is 5.759.683,36 Moldovan lei including VAT. The final sum is 263.86 Moldovan lei below the bid submitted, after the usual verification of the bill of quantities: on 4 May the contracting authority asked for the correction of a quantity entered wrongly — 24.90 square metres of longitudinal road markings instead of 24.09 — and the bid was adjusted accordingly. In the electronic file of the procedure, the status of the awards still appears as “pending”; the act that records the result is the award decision. City hall announced that the works have begun and that, under the contract, they must be completed within five months.

This also clears up the apparent mismatch between the “about 6 million lei” in the announcement and the 4.8 million in the bid. The figures measure different things, and the documents say so explicitly: the prices in the tender are without VAT, while the total in the financing agreement includes, alongside the works, the technical supervision services of 1.1%. The contract including VAT plus the supervision percentage gives 5,823,040 Moldovan lei — less than half a percentage point away from the 5,797,056 Moldovan lei that follow from converting the sum in the agreement. The itemised bill of quantities is not published.

What “Stage 1” concretely covers

The tender specification describes the works in detail. It starts with the removal of the existing surfacing, “in an advanced state of degradation”, then the pedestrian path is rebuilt with a distribution layer of crushed stone and precast concrete slabs, with new kerbs.

Then come the fittings and the greenery: 34 benches and as many concrete bollards, markings over 24 square metres, a parking area, about 375 square metres of sown grass, four planted trees and 29 thujas. The technical design and the bill of quantities were drawn up by a certified specialist, and the bill of quantities was checked by a certified verifier, the document states.

It is, then, a promenade laid out on the existing dike, not a new structure — and it is only the first stage: the council decision calls it exactly that, “Stage 1”.

This is not the Prut promenade: they are two different works

Two projects are being built in Ungheni this year, and both carry the words “dike”, “promenade” and “Delia”. They are easy to confuse, and the confusion changes the figures completely.

The Lake Delia promenade — the one in this article — is a work of about 5.8 million Moldovan lei, paid from the municipal budget with Cluj co-financing, carried out by SRL Balt-Cons, with an announced term of five months.

The dike on the Prut and on its Delia tributary, in the Ungheni-Vale neighbourhood, is a separate European project: 2,341 metres of reinforced dike, with a promenade on top, under the cross-border Interreg NEXT Romania – Republic of Moldova programme, together with the twin town of Dorohoi, with a grant of 922,715 euros, a contract of over 15 million Moldovan lei signed with a firm from Chișinău and a nine-month term.

They are different budgets, different financiers, different contractors and different purposes: one protects the neighbourhood from the floods of the Prut, the other turns the shore of a leisure lake into a promenade.

What Lake Delia means for the city

Lake Delia is not a new item on the administrative map of the municipality. In January 2026, the Municipal Council approved a regulation dedicated to its administration. Since 21 June, the lake shore has hosted one of the two municipal beaches with lifeguards, alongside the one on the Prut. And the development of the promenade appears in decision 4/5 as part of a broader objective of the Local Operational Plan 2021–2027: revitalising the lake area by developing the beach and the green spaces around it, with protection for the local ecosystem and the inclusion of the area in the tourist circuit.

The rendering published by city hall shows how the shore is meant to look: a paved walkway, a separately marked lane, long concrete benches with wooden slats and a wooden platform. Responsible for implementation is, under the council decision, deputy mayor Nicolae Cevaga.

For a city that is rethinking its urban zoning in parallel and investing in open public spaces, the promenade is one more major intervention this year on the bank of a body of water, after the one on the Prut.

Ten years of twinning and 4.87 million Romanian lei

The relationship that makes the transfer possible has an exact date. The cooperation understanding was approved by Decision 538 of 23 September 2016 of the Cluj-Napoca Local Council and by Decision 7/2 of 13 October 2016 of the Ungheni Town Council, and the signing took place in Cluj-Napoca on 16 November 2016, by mayors Emil Boc and Alexandru Ambros. The date appears in the press release issued at the time by Cluj-Napoca city hall and on the “Twin cities” page of the Ungheni city hall website — so the ten years fall due in November. The announcement of 28 July gives 16 October; the same city hall page shows that in October 2016 Ungheni signed its twinning agreement with Iași.

Ten years mean, in money, ten allocations voted by the Cluj-Napoca Local Council, adding up to 4,873,972 Romanian lei (RON) — about 18.7 million Moldovan lei at today’s exchange rate:

Of the total, 4,748,972 Romanian lei are investments, and 125,000 — humanitarian aid, voted in April 2022 for the refugees from Ukraine who had reached Ungheni. In the archive of decisions of the Cluj-Napoca Local Council there is no allocation for 2021. The figures do not include the two buses donated by the Cluj transport company, for which there is no financing decision of the Local Council and whose value is not published.

A pattern is also visible: for four years in a row the money went to the same place — the Central Park, renamed “Micul Cluj” (Little Cluj) in 2020, and the successive stages of its development — then into the centre of the town, and now onto the lake shore. The sums have grown slowly, from 450,000 to 593,000 Romanian lei, and the last three decisions all finance “stages” of development works under way.

For Ungheni residents, the concrete test comes in two steps: the works have to be accepted in order for the Cluj share to be paid, and the agreement that covers it sets, in article 2, the deadline of 31 December 2026.

The exact sums, the financing structure and the obligations of the parties come from Decision no. 527 of 20 July 2026 of the Cluj-Napoca Local Council and from Decision no. 4/5 of 15 May 2026 of the Ungheni Municipal Council, together with the Financing Agreement annexed to it, published on the website of Cluj-Napoca city hall and in the State Register of Local Acts. The data on the tender, the bidders and the clarifications, contract award decision no. 21 of 11 May 2026 and the tender specification come from the open file of the procedure, published by the MTender system in OCDS format. The equivalents in Moldovan lei, the percentage shares and the addition of VAT to technical supervision are calculated by Triunghi.md at the official exchange rate of the National Bank of Moldova valid on 29 July 2026: 20.1016 Moldovan lei to one euro and 3.8429 Moldovan lei to one Romanian leu. The statement of mayor Emil Boc is reproduced from the announcement of Ungheni city hall of 28 July 2026.