Romania's ruling partners blame each other as OMV Petrom likely to avoid solidarity tax

The National Liberal Party (PNL), the junior ruling party in Romania, blames the Social Democrat (PSD) finance minister Adrian Caciu for not having attended or for not contributing to the public consultations organised last year by the European Commission's DG TAXUD on the Regulations for the solidarity contribution (windfall tax).

President Klaus Iohannis declared in Brussels on February 9 that he is following the case of OMV Petrom regarding the solidarity tax and that, judging from the data he has, the Ministry of Finance drafted the ordinance without consulting the Ministry of Energy.

Since the beginning of the year, ANAF, and now the National Mineral Resources Agency - ANRM, have been conducting inspections at OMV Petrom in order to establish whether the company should pay the tax. At the same time, the Government asked for clarifications from the European Commission.

OMV Petrom, which more than tripled its profit last year thanks to the high energy prices, said that according to its calculations, the company is not subject to the solidarity contribution, sparking protests from other taxpayers and mutual accusations among the ruling partners PNL and PSD.

PNL urged the Ministry of Finance led by PSD to explain why four NACE codes [used by OMV Petrom to evade the solidarity contribution] were not included in the ordinance and why the Finance Ministry has not opted for a more general formulation with no NACE codes specified, as it was the case in other countries, G4media.ro reported.

PNL said that it is open to debates within the ruling coalition "to identify solutions to correct the situation generated by these restrictive specifications included in the Government ordinance."

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