Law draft on fiscal budgetary responsibility, passed by MPs

Chamber of Deputies debated and adopted on Tuesday the law draft on fiscal budgetary responsibility, with 135 votes in favor, 97 against and one abstention.The law draft is going to be sent for promulgation.

According to the official report, this project is aimed at regulating the drafting procedures of multi-annual budgets, by setting up limits for budget rectifications during the year, the fiscal rules for expenditure, staff spending and budget deficit, as well as the setting up of a Fiscal Council.

Democrat Liberals through PD-L MP Petru Calian argued that the law draft on fiscal budgetary responsibility is the most important in this field, this year and its adoption is also required by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This opinion was shared by UDMR MP Petru Lakatos who underlined that other recently integrated countries into the European Union have adopted similar laws.

On the other side, PSD + PC representatives brought criticism to the law draft, maintaining that it has many Constitutional related problems and contains a lot of ambiguities.

'We are on the last leg as for a law draft which has many debatable points from the Constitutional point of view, as well as from the standpoint of harmonization with legal and general provisions in the fiscal field and (...) it contains a lot of ambiguities. The law draft fails to spell the judicial value of the fiscal budgetary strategy and the macro-economic framework, set to become mandatory benchmarks. We say that the Fiscal Council is an independent authority, but we find no such item in the Constitution. We speak about a restriction to rectify the budget by emergency ordinances, but the law fails to contain such a reference, not even by far. We do not want to be part of this legislative massacre', stated PSD MP Viorel Stefan.

He also criticized the fact that the law fails to spell out the penalties for ministers in case of law infringement. Liberals even suggested the law draft to be returned to the committee, but their request was rejected by vote. 'Unfortunately, as this law draft is presented, it is neither important, nor necessary and this variant is useless and arrogant. It is an artifact of intentions as imposed by IMF', said Liberal MP Eugen Nicolaescu, quoted by Agerpres.