Romanian court says that law removing over 100 taxes is constitutional

Romania's Constitutional Court ruled on Friday that the law removing 102 non-fiscal taxes, including the environment stamp for registering second-hand cars and the radio-TV tax, is constitutional. The law was promoted by Liviu Dragnea, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which won the parliamentary elections last Sunday. Altought the law passed the Chamber of Deputies in late October, President Klaus Iohannis challenged it at the Constitutional Court in mid-November. “The Constitutional Court’s decision on removing the 102 taxes is yet another proof that what is good for the people can’t be unconstitutional,” Liviu Dragnea wrote on his Facebook page soon after the Court communicated the decision. “This is the second proof that those who attacked these two good laws had only an electoral reason. They though that PSD would lose votes in the elections if they blocked the two laws. However, this was a miscalculation, and everything turned against them.” The second law Dragnea is referring to in his Facebook post is the one through which the Parliament increased the wages of all public education and healthcare employees. The Constitutional Court decided on Wednesday that this law is constitutional too. PSD leader Liviu Dragnea ended his post on Facebook by saying that both the removal of the 102 non-fiscal taxes and the wage increases have been included in the 2017 budget. However, President Klaus Iohannis announced that he would send the law that removes 102 taxes back to the Parliament for review, reports local News.ro. This will delay the enforcement of the law, but it's unlikely that the new Parliament, controlled by PSD, will change it. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com