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Activity of the Parliament on April 4–17, 2005

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Beginning of activity of the 16th legislature

Elected on March 6 and validated on March 17, 2005, Moldova’s 16th Legislature (or the 5th Legislature since Moldova became independent) held the first sitting on March 24, when it elected the speaker and deputy speaker on behalf of the majority faction, established the date of presidential election, and accepted the resignation of the cabinet of ministers. Lawmakers created the permanent bureau and permanent commissions on April 1.

Parliamentarians elected the chief of state with a plenty of votes on April 4. The newly-elected president was sworn in and officially invested for a four-year mandate on April 7, at a joint festive session of the Parliament and Constitutional Court, with participation of many invitees.

Lawmakers elected the second deputy speaker on April 8, while the chief of state proposed the candidacy of prime minister, entrusting him to create a new governmental team within two weeks. Also, the chief of state addressed the parliament and highlighted the need of a cardinal reform of the state administration, a reform which will support the implementation of tasks of the executive and country in general:

Undoubtedly, these tasks will serve as base of the governing programme which the candidate to the prime minister post will unveil soon in the Parliament and the new governmental team will have to be very competent in order to implement them.

The parliament started the examination and adoption of draft legislative documents on April 8. Obviously, they are part of the old documents which the precedent parliament failed to adopt.

Plenary talks showed that there are no big differences between parliamentary factions in these sectors, with lawmakers adopting several drafts almost unanimously.

Decision on competences of parliamentary commissions

The acting Parliament created only nine parliamentary commissions, while the permanent commission for public administration took over the former competence of the environment commission.

Following are the structures and competences of permanent commissions of legislature:

Juridical commission for appointments and immunities: constitutional regulations on civil, penal, administrative law, civil and administrative procedure; juridical organisation, status of magistrates and prosecutor’s office, election legislation, legislation on parties and public associations, parliamentary discipline, immunities and appointments.

Commission for economic policy, budget and finances: legislative framework on policy on sustainable development and insurance of economic growth; budgetary, fiscal and customs policy; financial-crediting and monetary-bank policy; investment activity; insurance market; protection of producers and consumers; internal and external trade; optimization of activity field of real sector of national economy (licensing, certification, accreditation, evaluation, etc.); optimization of privatisation and property.

Commission for national security, defence and public order: national security issues; conduct of activity of specialized structures of executive power; combat of crime, corruption and terrorism, insurance of public order; guard and state border regime; reform of Armed Forces, social and juridical protection of military; conduct of activity of customs bodies, penitentiary system and Emergency Situations Department; protection of state secret.

Commission for foreign policy and European integration: foreign policy programmes; readjustment of Moldova’s legislation to international standards and control on implementation of the European Union’s Action Plan for Moldova; interparliamentary cooperation; treaties and other international documents.

Commission for human rights: human rights; problems of national minorities; problems of religions; citizenship; migration; insurance of equal chances for women and men; protection of external communities and refugees.

Commission for public administration, environment and territorial development: central and local public administration; administrative-territorial organisation; environment protection, natural geosystems and biosystems; rural development; tourism.

Commission for culture, science, education, youth, sport and mass media: education; youth; culture and cultural-artistic institutions; national cultural patrimony; scientific research, inventions and innovations; sport; mass media, advertisement.

Commission for agriculture and food industry: programmes on agriculture, horticulture, viticulture, livestock, fishing, forestry, hunting fund, and food industry; ecological agriculture; quality of food products; veterinary and phyto-sanitary control; protection of origin names of agricultural and food products; forms of property, association, crediting, leasing; land fund.

Commission for social protection, healthcare and family: social protection; insurance and state social assistance; healthcare and medical assistance; problems of family, mother and child; work relations and salary.

Representatives of the Communist faction will head five commissions in line with the political configuration of the Parliament:

Representatives of the former electoral alliance Democratic Moldova Bloc, represented by the parliamentary faction Our Moldova Alliance at present, will lead two commissions:

The faction representing the Christian Democratic People’s Party will head one commission:

To mention that all the leaders of this parliamentary faction hold high ranking posts: Iurie Rosca is Deputy Speaker, Vlad Cubreacov is chairman of the Christian Democratic faction, and Stefan Secareanu is chairman of the parliamentary commission.

The Democratic Party of Moldova will represent the commission for social protection, healthcare and family, while its member Valentina Buliga will head it.

Parliament’s decision on approval of the regulation on management of money from the vine growing sustenance fund and means used for administration of state-owned trademarks

This regulation establishes the modality of management and allocation of money for partial compensation of spending for creation of vineyards and coverage of expenses related to administration of state-owned trademarks.

It establishes that the Agri-Industrial Department Moldova-Vin administrates this fund which comprises about 60 million lei. The incomes of the fund are raised at the Central Treasury on account of the Finance Ministry.

The means of the fund are used for the following:

Business and individuals who planted at least five hectares of vine starting spring 2004, in line with creation project, will benefit from partial compensation of spending for vineyards.

The partial compensation of spending for planting of vineyards in the amount of 25,000 lei per hectare of useful surface is available for businesses and individuals who planted vines for grapes and grafts by using grafted seeding material of sorts included in the register of sorts of plants, as well as plantations carrying grafts with vine carrying grafts included in the same register.

The applicants must present the following documents in order to benefit from partial compensation:

To mention that the law for completion of the law on brands and origin names of products was among the first laws approved at the beginning of activity of the Parliament in 2001, and it established the following:

Law on amendment and completion of the Fiscal Code

The Parliament excluded the mandatory announcement and fiscal registration of temporary bank accounts opened when the enterprise was created, by passing this law. It is presumed that this measure will additionally encourage the entrepreneurship and will limit the existing practices regarding sanctions for failure to communicate within two days the opening of temporary bank accounts, which could be used for only one kind of financial operations.

Draft law on leasing

The draft adopted in the first lecture exposes the leasing law in a new version, modernising the most of its provisions.

The new regulations particularly call for:

  1. Extension of categories of goods which can be the object of leasing contract.
  2. Individuals — consumers have no right at present to use and/or acquire goods on basis of a leasing operation and the law seeks the annulment of these restrictions.
  3. Defining of operational leasing and financial leasing.
  4. Introduction of an adequate protection for rights of locator in leasing contract and efficient legal remedies for reinstatement of ownership on goods. Thus, the shorter procedure for reception of goods, stipulated by the Code of Civil Procedure of Moldova, will be established.

April 11–15, 2005

The Parliament has started its usual activity regarding examination of draft legislative documents, with sittings taking place under a calm atmosphere. Only talks on drafts related to the structure of the cabinet of ministers and live broadcasting of plenary sittings provoked ardent debates among lawmakers, which were calmed down through a separate voting.

Law for amendment of the law on executive

The Moldovan president unveiled this initiative in the Parliament with a couple of days after introducing the new prime minister to lawmakers and proposing the cardinal reformation of the cabinet of ministers and central public administration authorities.

According to the new structure, the cabinet of ministers will comprise 15 ministries:

Also, the cabinet will comprise other central administrative bodies such as:

The law adopted by the Parliament does not establish the hierarchy of these structures, but available reports say that the central executive administration would correspond to the following scheme: ministry — national bureau (centre/ chamber) — service — agency. No concrete subordination is indicated.

Comparing this structure of executive with the one indicated by the Moldovan president to lawmakers, we can observe some differences since the chief of state proposed maximum 17 ministries instead of the 16 ministries and 14 departments in the Tarlev-I cabinet. It was presumed that departments would disappear as central administrative institutions and ministries would take over their tasks. Opposition lawmakers indicated this issue, and described this reform as insufficient and incapable to fulfil the tasks established for the next four years.

Law on live broadcast of plenary sittings of the Parliament

Albeit it seems that they are interested the most in solving this problem, not all the lawmakers shared the same opinion regarding the proposal of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (PPCD) to ensure the live broadcasting of plenary sittings. They invoked economic and political reasons against this idea, saying even that “TV watchers would not understand what is discussing there” and “the rating of these programmes would be null.”

The main arguments in favour of this initiative were based on experience of European countries and need to ensure the information of public. It was highlighted that “the price is not important” for accomplishment of these goals, no matter how high it is.

It is worth to underline that parliamentarians did not indicate any financial sources to cover these amendments, nor they established any date for implementation of these amendments. As a result, if the law is published, its accurate implementation could be demanded immediately after its appearance in Monitorul Oficial.

International documents on activity of GUUAM

Chisinau will host on April 21–22 the GUUAM summit and the Parliament has urgently ratified several international documents in this regard:

Yalta Chart of GUUAM

The chart is the key juridical document on constitution of the organisation, named on basis of first letters of founding states: Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova.

The initiative to create this association of states was launched in the mid-1990s. Later, the GUUAM leaders signed three political declarations — on October 10, 1997 in Strasbourg, on April 24, 1999 in Washington, and on September 6, 2000 in New York, so that GUUAM became a regional initiative aimed to promote the cooperation on European and regional security matters, in particular, within the OSCE.

Moldova joined this initiative to implement concrete projects on facilitation of trade and development of Euro-Asian transportation networks, as well as border security, struggle against terrorism, organised crime, and illegal trafficking in drugs and human beings. The United States and European Union provide political and financial assistance for cooperation within GUUAM.

According to the GUUAM Chart, this organisation has an open nature, being created in compliance with universally recognised international law norms and principles and key cooperation sectors: economy, science, technologies and environment, infrastructure of transports, energy, telecommunications, investments and finances, humanitarian sector, culture, education, mass media, tourism, and youth exchange.

The annual meeting of chiefs of state is the supreme body of GUUAM, while the member states hold the rotating chairmanship in this organisation in alphabetic order.

The meetings of chiefs of state pass decisions on key directions of political, economic and humanitarian cooperation within GUUAM; creation of specialized bodies of GUUAM; coordination of stances regarding current issues of common interest of international life.

The sessions of foreign ministers which takes place, as a rule, twice a year is the executive body of GUUAM. The sessions of foreign ministers examine problems related to implementation of agreements within GUUAM and draft proposals on development and continued deepening of GUUAM cooperation for examination at meetings of chiefs of state.

The Committee of National Coordinators (CNC), which comprises national coordinators named by foreign ministers and by one on behalf of every member state, is the task force of GUUAM. CNC coordinates the activity between GUUAM-member states, prepares the meetings of chiefs of state and sessions of foreign ministers. CNC holds sittings every quarter, while the member states host them in consecutive order.

GUUAM agreement on creation of free trade zone

The agreement aims to create a free trade zone to cover most of commercial exchanges between Moldova and GUUAM-member states. The key objectives of this agreement comprise among others:

Agreement on creation of the GUUAM Information Office

The GUUAM Information Office will be the secretariat and information centre of GUUAM. The office aims at information support of the GUUAM National Coordinators, state and nongovernmental structures of member countries for accomplishment of an economic, political, cultural-humanitarian cooperation.

The spending estimate for the GUUAM Information Office in 2004 was established in the amount of 90,610 dollars. Thus, every member pays 18,122 dollars (of which 8,240 dollars is the initial sum paid once in three years, and 9,882 dollars is the permanent amount paid every year).

Creation and adequate functioning of the Information Office would allow a deeper cooperation between member states for accomplishment and implementation of the GUUAM Trade and Transportation Facilitation Project.

Draft law on ecological agriculture

The law adopted by the Parliament in the first lecture aims to regulate the social relations regarding ecological agriculture and use of synthesis chemical products, as well as sale of vegetal and animal products:

The law establishes key notions such as:

Following are the key principles of ecological agriculture:

Title VIII of the Fiscal Code: “Taxes for natural resources”

The legislation regulating the rights and conditions for the use of natural resources comprises several legislative documents: code of waters; code of subsoil; forest code; law on natural resources. These laws establish that the natural resources are used for a pay to the budget. The state budget laws stipulated the taxes for use of natural resources until now. The draft Title VIII on taxes for natural resources of the Fiscal Code establishes the type of taxes, quotas, mode of pay, and facilities. Title VIII of the Fiscal Code will establish the notions, object and subject of taxes, concrete quotas of taxes, and terms for their payment to the budget.

It is also proposed a wider category of taxpayers who collect water, inclusion of public and non-commercial organisations, notaries, bars, foreign individuals and businesses as subjects of taxation.

Also, it is planned that the current mode of calculation of water collection taxes be simplified in dependence of limits established by the Republican Concern Apele Moldovei. Also, it is proposed the exemption of certain categories of payers in agriculture sector, farms which have no pumping system for irrigation, and fish growing taxpayers from water tax. The mode of calculation of taxes for geological prospecting and geological exploitation is significantly simplified, as fixed quotas of these taxes and their payment are established in the size calculated before start of these works.

Taking into account the fact that petrol and natural gas are extracted in the districts of Cahul and Vulcanesti, a tax for their extraction in the size of 20 percent of the cost of one unit of extracted raw material is proposed to be established.

March 7 – April 3, 2005 April 18 – May 1, 2005