According to the document, the passage of the Ordinance represents a flagrant violation of the transparency criteria stipulated in Law No. 52/2003 on decision-making transparency in public administration, as none of the parties involved was consulted and the bill was not published on the website of the Romanian Government, so that the relevant industries were reduced to the status of mere spectator.
Also, there has been no consultation of the Competition Council with regard to this Ordinance - as the Competition Law No. 21/1996 requires - and the Ministries of Justice and Public Finance, respectively, were not invited to express their view on the Ordinance, according to the legislation in force.
'The business community challenges this abusive and non-transparent approach of the legislative process and classifies it as subjective, whereas the public stances expressed suggest that it is meant to serve the interests of certain media group owners,' AmCham Romania underscores.
'We call on the Government of Romania to promptly suspend for 60 days the publication of the Ordinance in the Official Journal and resume the process only when the procedures set forth in the Romanian and the EU legislation are observed,' the AmCham Romania release also reads.
