Official Chiritoiu: Good laws are pointless if disregarded
There is unfair competition in Romania and those who respect the rules find it difficult to compete with those who do not respect the rules, that's why I think that having a good law is pointless if the people who ignore it don't pay anything, the president of the Competition Council, Bogdan Chiritoiu said on Thursday at the "PRIA Competition and Circular Economy" conference, told Agerpres.
"Having a good law is for nothing if those who ignore it don't pay anything, if those who don't pay taxes aren't sanctioned, if those who don't meet their targets aren't sanctioned enough, if those who report falsely aren't checked, aren't caught. (...) I'm primarily interested in the country as a whole, in this society to fulfill its objectives. Now this Guarantee-Return system appears. So, of the entire flow of waste that once went to the municipality and would have been sorted, we want to make a part of it for selective collection and then it no longer reaches pit, it no longer reaches sorting, and from the other side to go to the SGR mechanism, which starts in 70 days," mentioned Chiritoiu.
The president of the competition authority appreciated that in Romania competition is needed both to have lower prices and to stimulate innovation.
"There is unfair competition, there are people who do not respect the rules and it is difficult for those who respect them to compete with them. At the same time, it is much easier to win, to make money, if you are dealing with fewer competitors and somewhere we, the state, have to distinguish between legitimate measures to protect competition and still not allow competitors to be excluded from the market. So, we still want competition. Why? So that prices are lower, first of all. And two, the competition also puts pressure to innovate, it also forces you to come up with new ideas, to try to do things differently, than with the things you were doing until now," the official argued.
PRIAevents, the Competition Council and the Circular Economy Coalition (CERC) are organizing, on Thursday, a new edition of the "PRIA Competition and Circular Economy" conference.