Parliament in Bucharest quickly voted last
\nmonth a bill to eliminate over 100 non-fiscal duties, but the bill is yet to be
\nsigned into law by president Klaus Iohannis. Initiated by the Social Democratic
\nParty, the bill stipulates the elimination, beginning January 1st
\n2017, of the environment stamp duty for vehicles, the tax for issuing
\nprovisional passports, the radio and TV licence fee, and the fee for issuing
\nfiscal records, among others. <\/p>\n
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President Iohannis on Tuesday challenged the
\nbill at the Constitutional Court, arguing that it fails to comply with several
\nConstitutional provisions. In a note sent to the Court’s magistrates, Iohannis
\nsays the bill departs from constitutional norms related to the principle of the
\nseparation of powers and legality, the government’s relationship with
\nParliament and the role of the executive. The president also says that many
\ncitizens wish to have some duties removed but this has to be done coherently,
\neffectively and responsibly. Iohannis says that because the bill was drafted in
\nhaste, it may contain some unconstitutional aspects: <\/p>\n
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For reasons I’m personally not aware of, Parliament moved very quickly,
\nwhich resulted in a failure to comply with certain procedural requirements,
\nperhaps intentionally. I believe that some issues related to both procedure and
\nfundamental issues have not been well clarified by Parliament so I have
\nrequested that the bill’s constitutionality be verified. Of course, if the
\nCourt rules that some parts of the bill have to be reformulated, Parliament may
\ndo this, and if the bill is sent back to me to signed into law I will see at
\nthe time whether I will endorse it or send it back to Parliament for
\ncompletion.<\/p>\n
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President Iohannis has cautioned that by
\nimplementing this law Romania runs the risk of exceeding the 3% target deficit
\nagreed upon with international bodies. An exclusively political decision,
\nthis is how the initiator of the law, Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea
\nhas described president Iohannis’ decision to challenge the constitutionality
\nof the law. For their part, the Liberals agree with most of the provisions of
\nthe bill but argue that the environment stamp duty and the radio and TV licence
\nfee need to be maintained. The elimination of the latter has sparked heated
\ndebates of late. Its supporters say that doing away with the fee and funding
\nthe public broadcasting services exclusively from the budget could lead to
\ntheir political subordination. <\/p>\n
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The Court has set December 14th as
\nthe date for giving the verdict on the president’s challenge. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romanian president Klaus Iohannis challenges at the Constitutional Court new bill on the elimination of 102 taxes passed by Parliament in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":70927,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[30041,28945],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-70926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-constitutional-court","tag-klaus-iohannis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n