Further to the message on the impact of OUG 114/2018 transmitted on Thursday to the organizations in the Coalition for Development of Romania (CDR), AmCham Romania sends on Friday an alarm signal on „the accelerated degradation of the quality of public policies, regulation and governance in Romania” and considers that is reaching an alarming level at the beginning of this year.
According to the AmCham release:
“We are confronted with simultaneous amendments by emergency ordinances of legislation in multiple strategic sectors of the economy, at an unjustified alert rate that does not allow all the necessary steps to be taken to ensure the predictability, transparency and assessment of the economic and societal impact of the measures adopted.
Such an approach has transformed the National Reform Program into an obsolete document for establishing reform priorities at the national, and the results of World Bank projects aimed at restructuring the mechanisms for the implementation of the reform within the central function of the government are forgotten.
While the business community calls for the repeal of Ordinance 114/2018, the Government announces new bills with extensive implications in the economy, which deepens the uncertainty and the risk for Romania to be vulnerable in a global, regional and national economic context marked by tensions and an economic cycle that reached maturity.
Among the measures announced we mention the OUG draft initiated by ANPC which imposes fines of up to 4% on the companies’ turnover, the unexplained transfer of attributions from ANAF to CNSP (National Commission for Strategy and Prognosis) or pressures on some independent institutions such as The Competition Council by imposing an unrealistic timetable for completing the investigations or the systematic attacks to the National Bank of Romania.
On the same note it is also seen the distortion of the normal pace for the preparation, public consultation and approval of the 2019 State Budget Draft in the Parliament. This approach, detached from the usual practice and the timetable set by the Law on Public Finance for the state budget adoption, deprives us of the opportunity to have a quality public debate on the most important public policy tool regarding the allocation of resources for the current year, as well as of a quality reflection on the way public resources are allocated in the Parliament.
The overflow of emergency ordinances that lack the emergency element, which deviates from legal norms, from the European approach on a better regulatory process, from the one on the impact of new regulations on SMEs or the one on the Regulatory Impact Assessment, is sometimes aggressive, induces a lack of predictability in the economy as a whole, discredits the regulatory process, casts doubt on the reasons behind these measures adopted despite repeated negative signals from those affected, and removes Romania from its commitments taken within the European structure.
Ironically, all these developments happen precisely in the period when Romania receives the most attention from member states and the European institutions, the one where we hold the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
AmCham Romania draws attention to the high price Romania pays in terms of country’s image and credibility among investors, built in time, with sustained efforts and very hard to recover, once it is lost.
Meanwhile, Romanians who choose to remain in the country began to pay the bill for the OUG 114/2018 and companies are abandoning their investment and expansion plans in favour of other markets.
We call for a return to a transparent and constructive regulatory process that pursues long-term development goals rather than partisan momentary interests.
