USR says minister Bolos wants adoption of emergency ordinance on EU funds without public consultations

The coordinator of the Public Policy Department of Save Romania Union (USR, opposition), Cristian Ghinea, reproaches the minister of European Funds, Marcel Bolos of intending to promote in the government meeting on Wednesday an emergency ordinance that was not subject to public debate and that "will cause huge problems", USR informs in a press release.

The government emergency ordinance (OUG) "developed in secret", says USR, will regulate the field of European funds for the period 2021 - 2027, totaling tens of billions of euros.

"The ordinance should have appeared on the MIPE website, in public consultation, but it was not published. Worse, the ordinance will be a surprise for the other ministers because it was written by a secret group. Former USR minister Cristian Ghinea makes an appeal to the leaders of National Liberal Party (PNL, co-ruling) and Social Democratic Party (PSD, co-ruling), Nicolae Ciuca and Marcel Ciolacu, respectively, to stop this ordinance before it enters into force because it will create huge problems," the source said.

According to the USR, through this OUG, all declaration models, financing contracts, guidelines, "what will require changes and corrections" will be established through other emergency ordinances.

"The MIPE secret ordinance will cause huge problems. Instead of simplifying and decentralizing European regional funds, Bolos comes up with an ordinance that dictates at the legal level what the forms look like, what the guidelines are like, what colour the toilet paper should be and how much be the lace from the curtain at every independent development agency. In fact, Marcel Bolos is afraid to sign ministerial orders to solve the problems and then issues OUGs on a conveyor belt, because that way he is not responsible for anything," stated Ghinea, former MIPE minister.

USR adds that Romania "already had problems because of the OUGs" given by Marcel Bolos and also says that the draft emergency ordinance "takes texts from the European Regulations and inserts them" into Romanian law, although this is not allowed.

Cristian Ghinea claims that the idea of unitary regulations is good, "but not by emergency ordinance and in no case secret, between Christmas and New Year's Eve". USR emphasizes that the Management Authorities must benefit from independence and that problems can be solved by ministerial order, not by emergency ordinances, Agerpres informs.