I have my Croma for 6 months now, 10000 km.
When I just acquired my car I removed the EGR valve to clean it, it wasn't necessary because it was a new one.
The engine is a 8V 115 hp.
I took a graph with FIATEcuScan and found out that the EGR valve was open (I think 40%) almost all the time and only closed (4 %) during acceleration.
A few weeks ago I removed the valve once more for inspection but it was still clean.
Because the car sometimes hesitates at 2000 rpm I put a blanking plate.
The 16V 150 hp blanking plate is rectangular and has four 8 mm holes.
The 8V 115/120 hp plate is oval, I drilled five 6,5 mm holes in it.
The surface of 5 x 6,5 mm diameter is slightly larger then 4 x 8 mm.
The hesitation is completely gone but I can't tell the effect on consumption as I started using the AC the same time.