The current paper completes the empirical literature on the European Union (EU) climate and energy policy design and evaluation, namely the implementation part related to the development, assessment and approval of the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) of the Member States (MS) for the period 2021-2030. These strategic documents are foreseen by the Governance Regulation no. EU 2018/1999 as the main tools used to implement the climate and energy policies and targets by 2030.

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... is paper is organized as follows: the abstract gives an overview of the paper and its main conclusions. Section 1 depict the introduction and background about the whole process around NECPs and the main provisions related under the Governance Regulation. Section 2 reviews literature from the perspective of the EU negotiations on 2030&2050 energy and climate targets, legal aspects of climate and energy governance and the process of NECPs development and approval. It also includes a short presentation of the data used for the analysis, including their sources. Section 3 gives an insight about the approval of Romania's NECPs by the European Commission. At the same time, this section briefly comments on proposals made by the national authorities and the recommendations using as starting point Romania's position in 2014 during the 2030 climate and energy negotiations while taking into account the dynamic of the geopolitical situation to date. Section 4 concludes.