Parliament to Resume its Activity

The Romanian Parliament is back to work on 1 September

Valentin Țigău, 01.09.2014, 13:30

The chambers of the Romanian Parliament met for their first regular session this autumn, with the acute understanding that their legislative season will be put on hold, pending the campaign for the presidential elections scheduled for November. For the Senate, the priority is to issue legislation to pardon people who received undue amounts of money from the state through the fault of civil servants.

Social Democrat Prime Minister Victor Ponta expressed a wish to steer the law through the lower chamber as quickly as possible. The lower chamber’s main priority is the 5% slash to be applied to social security contributions, which will become mandatory for employers as of October 1. The measure has already passed the Senate in an emergency session on August 25. The other priority is the so-called Oil Law.

The members of the lower chamber are also supposed to debate the bill on changes to the forestry code, as well as a bill to apply changes to the pornography law, introduced by 37 MPs. In this case, the Chamber of Deputies is the decision-making forum. Parliament is also expected to issue a decision on the controversial emergency Government ordinance on political party switching in the case of local elected officials. According to the said executive ordinance, local elected officials have 45 days to shift political party allegiance without forfeiting their position.

The Government ordinance has angered the opposition, which announced it would seek a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Liberal Democrat chairman Vasile Blaga said that the Christian Liberal Alliance made up of the Liberal Democratic and National Liberal parties would introduce two new simple motions in addition to the one regarding the justice system, which was overdue in the previous session. One of them regards taxation, as the opposition claims that Romania has the worst revenue collection level and that tax evasion has reached its worst levels since 1990.

This session of Parliament might also debate the bill introduced by the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania on autonomy, which also stands for public debate. At the same time, Parliament is also supposed to debate and pass the state budget and social insurance budget for 2015, as soon as the Government provides Parliament with the proper documentation.