The bill on the implementation of the fiscal, customs and budgetary policy for 2016 does not contain economic-financial justification concerning its necessity. Furthermore, the informative note to the bill does not contain an analysis of the compatibility with the corresponding regulations of the EU legislation, said experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC), who appraised the bill.

In a news conference at IPN, the Center’s head Galina Bostan said that when Parliament adopted the bill in the first reading, it didn’t take into account the period offered for coordination with civil society, which is a negative aspect. “It should be remarked that the bill substantiation note is very large and the authors made considerable effort to compile it. Regretfully, this note describes mainly the proposed norms, instead of explaining the reasons for the changes,” she stated. According to her, there is a risk that the authorities will say in a period that these changes cannot be implemented because there is no substantiation and the document will have to be modified.

The CAPC head also said that the bill authors didn’t include the economic-financial justification in the informative note and didn’t make reference to any assessment of the costs of the bill. The draft law also does not contain an analysis of the regulatory impact, but this was absolutely necessary.

Galina Bostan considers that if the property tax envisioned in the bill is introduced, particular groups of people could be discriminated. The bill also contains references to norms that do not exist.

Expert of the independent think tank “Expert-Grup” Dumitru Budeanschi said the presence of a large number of modifications in one legal act involves a high corruption risk. “A large document can contain provisions that protect particular narrow interests and essential things are probably overlooked,” he stated.

The experts concluded that the provisions of the bill generally do not run counter to the legislation. However, to exclude provisions that are similar to other provisions of the legislation, an additional analysis is required.

The analysis was carried out within the Vulnerability Appraisal of Draft Normative and Legislative Acts Project that is supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bucharest.