Experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC) say the legislative initiative to redirect 50% of the money coming from excise duties on cigarettes to the health insurance funds, which was submitted by Communist MPs, is good, but contains a number of shortcomings that may hamper its adoption, or may later lead to the nullification of the bill.

In a news conference at IPN, Viorel Parvan, the expert who analyzed the bill, said the legislative initiative wasn’t appraised by the local authorities, the National Health Insurance Commission, which is responsible for this area, and by the Government. Under the Constitution, any legislative initiative to reduce or increase the state budget revenues must be appraised by the executive.

The expert noted that the bill wasn’t proposed for public debates. Thus, neither civil society was able to pronounce on it. The authors also didn’t present the required economic-financial argumentation.

According to the bill authors, about 1.2 billion lei will be collected into the state budget from increasing the excise duties on cigarettes. Thus, 600 million lei of this sum is to be redirected to the mandatory health insurance funds, given the destructive effect of smoking on health.

CAPC head Galina Bostan said that though the legislative initiative is very good, it risks being rejected by Parliament for the reason that it was put forward by the Communist opposition. In this connection, the Center calls on the authors of the initiative to remove the shortcomings from the bill and on the government coalition – to support the good initiatives suggested by the opposition.

The analysis by the CAPC was made within the Vulnerability Expertise of the Draft Normative and Legal Acts Project that is supported financially by Matra Rule of Law and Good Governance Program of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.