The radio and TV license fee eliminated

The Romanian Chamber of Deputies rejected the request of President Klaus Iohannis to re-examine the law on the elimination of 102 non-fiscal taxes

Corina Cristea, 29.12.2016, 13:09

The Romanian Chamber of Deputies rejected the request of President Klaus Iohannis to re-examine the law on the elimination of 102 non-fiscal taxes, as had previously happened in the Senate. The law will be enforced on the first day of the first month after its publication in the Official Gazette.

Labeling as ungrounded the arguments of President Klaus Iohannis, the new Romanian Parliament decided to eliminate the radio and TV license fees alongside 101 other non-fiscal taxes. The elimination of these taxes had been decided upon by the former Parliament ahead of the December 11 legislative elections, which brought the Social Democrats back to power. However, the Romanian President refused to promulgate the law.

Although the Constitutional Court declared the law constitutional, Klaus Iohannis sent it back to Parliament for reexamination, because he considered the law had to be re-analyzed from the perspective of the effects felt by citizens. Nevertheless, the law was again passed in its initial form. The initiator of the law, Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea, told the Chamber of Deputies after the result of the vote was announced, that the law would help citizens avoid queuing and be humiliated.

Liviu Dragnea: “From now on these two institutions can be de-politicized, independent from political influence. In the context in which, under this law, they will be allotted a clear budget every year, there is no need for them to lobby Parliament, politicians, the finance minister or any other influential politician of the moment.”

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, with which the Social Democrats set up a governing coalition, also voted for the bill, alongside the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, which, in turn, signed a cooperation protocol with the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats. The Ethnic Hungarians had previously expressed their support for maintaining the radio and TV license fees.

Here is the Ethnic Hungarians’ leader, Kelemen Hunor: “The entire philosophy of budgetary institutions of the public radio and TV stations will change as well as their functioning. The salaries of the institutions’ employees will also be debated and we will soon realize that, through this vote, we have created a general chaos in the two institutions.”

The national minorities also voted for the passing of the bill in its initial form. From the opposition, the Liberals asked for the exclusion of the radio and TV license fees from the text of the law. Here is the interim president of the National Liberal Party, Raluca Turcan: “No one knows what will happen with the status of these institutions’ employees. We move the funding source of these institutions from their customers to the state budget, which will turn the institutions into simple annexes of the financier, that is of the government”.

The People’s Movement Party voted for maintaining the radio and TV license fees, as they consider that the public radio and TV stations should be a trigger for rebuilding the credibility of a large part of the mass media in Romania. The Save Romania Union decided to challenge to law at the Constitutional Court.