Romania to simplify procedure of granting Romanian citizenship

The Government of Romania will amend his week the Citizenship Law in an effort to have a “simpler administrative procedure” of granting Romanian citizenship, Romania’s Justice Minister Tudor Chiuariu said on September 1, quoted by the Romanian media. “We will amend the Citizenship Law to make the administrative procedure easier in order to process most of the pending applications. The present situation cannot be tolerated anymore”, said Chiuariu, referring particularly to the problems of the Moldovan applicants. He added that the Government will adopt Wednesday an emergency ordinance to modify the procedure of granting citizenship with a view to reducing bureaucratic obstacles and terms of processing the applications. The Justice Minister also mentioned that there are applications that were submitted in 2002-2003 and that haven’t been processed yet. Romania’s President Traian Basescu stated earlier this year that there are some 800,000 applications for citizenship submitted by Moldovan nationals. In response, the authorities in Chisinau dismissed the number as exaggerated.