The National Participation Council will weekly inform the general public about the bills and decisions included in the agenda of the Government’s meetings. According to the Council, it will be a method of ‘translating’ the bills so that they are understood by everyone.
In a news conference at IPN, Antoniţa Fonari, deputy head of the National Participation Council, said that society must be informed about the decisions that the Government is to take. “Every week, the Council will come before the press and will state its opinion on the bills that it considers can be corruptible,” she stated.
Antonita Fonari considers that at least the bills that provide for the allocation of large sums of money, their spending or channeling to certain needs should be made known. Sometimes, the people who pay taxes would like to influence the administration to allot money for certain services, but not for what the ministries decide.
The Council’s head Sergiu Ostaf said the agenda of the August 21 meeting of the Government includes a number of bills that aroused the civil society’s concern. The representatives of civil society consider that the Government should not take 1 million lei from its reserve fund for providing ten National Awards of 100,000 lei each.
Sergiu Ostaf referred to the bill proposed by Minister of the Environment Gheorghe Salaru, concerning selection hunting. He said that the bill does not clearly specify the ban on hunting in the protected areas and who can take part in selection hunting so that it will not solve the existing problems.
Another bill concerns the creation of two new posts – person responsible for making sure that the names of private companies are in accordance with the requirements of the Romanian language, and person who will authorize public advertising messages. Sergiu Ostaf said the monitoring of the names of companies is within the competence of the Licensing Chamber, while the advertising messages are authorized by the local public authorities.
According to Sergiu Ostaf, the National Participation Council consults every ministry about the legislative initiatives they propose and the recommendations of civil society are 60% accepted at that stage. When the bills are submitted to the Government, the Council’s suggestions are taken into account in 10% of the cases. If the controversial bills are debated in Parliament, it is the National NGO Council that intervenes.
