Romania’s Government adopts first measures to reduce bureaucracy

Romania’s Government adopted yesterday the first set of measures to reduce the bureaucracy that citizens face when dealing with public institutions. These include the elimination of the certified copy for various documents, the possibility to send copies of ID cards by email, and the possibility to make card payments at the tax agency ANAF or the Treasury units. Moreover, the public institutions that need the people’s criminal records will now ask the Police to provide this document. So far, people had to go to the Police themselves to get the criminal record, which some public institutions still demand in various situations. Public institutions won’t be allowed to ask for certified copies either. There are still many cases in which citizens are asked to bring certified copies for some documents which they anyway have to bring in their original form. “The authorities and public institutions will certify the original documents at the counter, without asking for certified copies,” the Government decided. Public institutions will also have to accept electronic copies of the citizens' IDs. Many institutions currently ask for hard copies of the citizens' IDs for almost any service they provide. The Government also decided to eliminate or combine the multiple taxes that people have to pay, often in different places, for getting IDs or passports. People who want to get their IDs renewed currently have to pay two taxes, a RON 7 tax for the ID itself and a RON 5 fiscal stamp, which can be bought from post offices. The Government removed the RON 5 fiscal stamp. Citizens also have to pay two taxes to get new passports but the Government decided to combine the two taxes into one, to save people from going to two places and also allow online payments. The Government also removed some low-value taxes and asked the public institutions to use electronic means to communicate with the citizens. The executive also wants the public institutions to share information about the citizens, where this is possible, in order to save people the effort of bringing the same documents to various institutions. “The state institutions will have to organize themselves so that they can directly transmit the data,” said Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos at the end of the Government meeting on Tuesday, June 28. Public authorities and institutions will also have to update the forms and list of documents required for various public services on the online portal e-direct.ro. Moreover, they will have to mention the time it takes to fill in various forms and to explain why they need all that information. Many of the changes approved on Tuesday have been suggested by the citizens after the Government launched “the paper cutting commission”, an initiative aimed at reducing bureaucracy in public institutions, in February this year. Over 3,300 proposals have been made on the online consultation platform maisimplu.gov.ro, which have been backed by almost 32,000 people. Some changes will be implemented immediately while others, which need technical changes within public institutions, will be implemented gradually. The Prime Minister asked the Minister for Public Consultation Violeta Alexandru to monitor how the public authorities implement the decisions included in the emergency ordinance.