PNL submits request to Ombudsman to notify CCR about ordinance on fiscal-budgetary measures

The Liberals on Friday submitted a request to the Ombudsman to notify the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) about the Government Emergency Ordinance (GEO) no. 114/2018 regarding the implementation of certain fiscal-budgetary measures.

"The Ombudsman is missing this time, too, he is on holiday again, even if we have now on the table an emergency ordinance of the Government with deadly measures for the economy, which will seriously affect the populations's living standards, for the population will have to pay for these aberrant measures. In the document that we submitted we invoked unconstitutionality reasons that the Ombudsman should notify to the Constitutional Court. We are speaking of a fiscal ordinance with deadly measures for the Romanian economy, which will put an end to the country's economic growth in 2019, and the cost of these measures will be paid by all Romanians. Punctually, we are speaking of the fact that the capping of the price for gas and electricity is a lie and a measure meant to serve some smart guys in this sector, and not the population. We are speaking of the fact that this capping of the price for gas and electricity is done at the producer level, meaning that it will be felt only at the level of consumer with direct agreements with the electricity or natural gas producers, while the population will have to support the cost of the new tax of 2% of the turnover that is applied to all companies in the energy sector," said the PNL spokesman, Ionel Danca, after the request was submitted.

He also added that the proposed tax on turnover for the telecommunications sector is "specific to authoritarian regimes, which want to restrict the population's access to free and good quality information," while appreciating that this tax will increase the invoice Romanians will have to pay for the telecommunications services and Internet.

"And this ordinance included another aberration that is nowhere else to be found in this world, the tax on the banks' assets depending on an indication that is established by the free inter-banking market, depending on Robor, while it is a huge lie that this measure will help limiting the Robor, for this is not possible, since this indicator is the result of the report between the demand and offer of loans on the inter-banking market. This tax will lead to an increase in the interest rates of Romanians who contracted loans with the banks," mentioned Danca.

In his turn, the President of the legal committee of PNL Bucharest, Cristian Bacanu, specified that the GEO no. 114/2018 was given in violation of the article 115 of the Constitution, in the sense that there is no emergency in adopting it, since the Government "cannot explain the emergency for all the measures."

"On the other hand, we are speaking of an ordinance that was written in mockery, with very many texts that remain unclear and fail to meet the clarity criterion in terms of legislative technique, which results in a violation of the article 1 of the Constitution, in corroboration with the Law on legislative technique no. 22/2000. We are speaking of an ordinance that breaks the free market principle, by the fact that it establishes some fixed prices for gas, for instance, but only for the production, which means that the population will pay more on their invoice, for the distribution and transport prices will be increased. We are speaking of the violation of the article 35 of the Constitution and the articles 119 and 120 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union and we are speaking about the violation of a directive, about the violation of the article 44 of the Constitution regarding the right to private property and about the violation of the constitutional right to pension, for the Government introduced some new measures that will affect all those who have money in the Pillar 2," explained Bacanu.

He also showed that in case the Ombudsman doesn't give an answer to this request, PNL will go to court. AGERPRES (RO - author: Dana Piciu, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Cristina Zaharia, editor: Adina Panaitescu)

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