Activity of the Parliament on March 1–14, 2006

Cooperation with civil society

The speaker has convoked the task forces of the Parliament at a sitting that examined the procedures of implementation of the concept on cooperation between Parliament and civil society, adopted in late 2005 (DP # 373-XVI of December 29, 2005). The speaker asked the heads of permanent commissions to pay more attention to cooperation with civil society, respecting the procedures established through the February 16, 2006 Decision of the Permanent Bureau, which determines the concrete mechanism of implementation of the concept: publishing of draft legislative acts on the website of the Parliament; reception of contributions of civil society organisations within 15 days; examination of proposals and their reporting.

Later, the Parliament has invited representatives of public associations at a meeting dedicated to the start of the process of cooperation with the Parliament. Marian Lupu said that all premises for the start of cooperation are prepared and the process of collaboration with civil society must focus on two areas:

the implementation of the schedule of legislative actions in line with the Resolution and Recommendations of the commission for the respect for obligations and commitments of member states of the Council of Europe;
the fulfilment of the legislative programme for 2005–2009.

It should be noted that draft legislative acts are being published on the official website of the Parliament starting late February, but the process is not orderly, it faces technical shortcomings: the arguments and other necessary additional acts are absent, operative information about submission of these documents to the Parliament. Also, the drafts are published selectively, while the Parliament Decision # 373-XVI stipulates that all draft legislative acts “registered in compliance with norms” will be published. Thus, the drafts that have challenged the most controversial and ardent debates within plenary sittings have not been proposed for public talks: draft laws on administrative and fiscal facilities for economic agents based on the left bank of the Dniester river; draft law on importation of granite items used for reconstruction of the Military Glory Memorial in the Chisinau municipality; the new draft law on vine and wine; draft law on online access to official acts; draft law on modification of the law on Governmental Agent; draft decision on findings of the control on execution of the law on making and circulation of ethyl alcohol and alcohol production, etc.

The Moldpres news agency said on March 2 that the permanent bureau of the Parliament has approved the regulation on accreditation of journalists at the works of the Parliament, as well as a list of accredited journalists. It noted that “the Permanent Bureau of the Parliament, at the initiative of the Press and Image Service,” will accredit the journalists at plenary sittings, sittings of permanent commissions, news conferences and other political events within legislature. Also, a series of grounds for withdrawal of accreditation was instituted: inappropriate conduct; provocative actions, scandal and other actions that contravene to the “generally recognised norms”. The draft regulation was not published, but the requirements for accreditation and issuing of identity papers, as well as the list of accredited journalists will be published soon on the website of the Parliament. It should be noted that lawmakers excluded in 2002 from the Parliament’s Regulation the norm allowing the withdrawal of authorisation from a mass media representative who attended the plenary sitting, if he presents “clear misinformation about works of the Parliament” and did not comply to observations of the chairman of the plenary sitting, meeting recommendations of the Council of Europe this way. Starting 2002 to 2005, journalists were accredited in the Parliament without any regulations and special requirements for accreditation.

Legislative documents

Law on additional support for entrepreneurial activity of the economic agents based in the Transnistrian region. According to the document, the territory of the localities Cocieri, Cosnita, Dorotcaia, Molovata Noua and Pirita will be a special area of additional support for entrepreneurial activity, with the purpose to speed up the social-economic development of these localities in the security zone under jurisdiction of the official authorities of Moldova. By departing from the Fiscal Code, the law establishes a series of additional rights and facilities (compensation of income tax, exemption from registration fee and tax for licence, reduction of duties for customs procedures, etc.) for resident economic agents based in the region (more than 200 subjects) or those that will invest there instead of assuming some correlative obligations.

Law for the modification and completion of some legislative acts with the purpose to establish fiscal and administrative facilities for economic agents based in the Transnistrian region, which do not have relations with the state budget of Moldova. The document stipulates that the customs duties, VAT and excises for import-export operations of economic agents that do not hold fiscal relations with the country’s budget will be applied in the order established by Government. According to Government’s intentions, following will be the tax repayment scheme: the Transnistria-based enterprises registered with the relevant bodies of the Republic of Moldova will pay taxes in line with the Moldovan legislation, but these amounts will be raised in a special account of the Customs Service. These amounts must be repaid to economic agents after delivery of goods to destination, while businesses will pay them to the Transnistrian budget. Representatives of opposition factions supported the adoption of this law when the draft was examined in the first reading, but raised serious objections against provisions of proposed regulations. They feared that the Government’s draft contravenes to Constitution, which says that the Parliament and local public administration establish the fees, taxes and other revenues of the national public budget, while the Government and fiscal bodies are only executors of these decisions.

Law for the modification and completion of the law on mode of publication and enforcement of official acts. The amendments adopted at the proposal of the parliamentary faction representing the Democratic Party of Moldova establish that the laws, decisions of the Parliament, decrees of the Moldovan President, decisions and orders of the Government, decisions and judgments of the European Court of Human Rights on cases in which Moldova is a defendant, acts of the Constitutional Court and Chamber of Auditors, normative acts of central public administration authorities, of the National Bank of Moldova and National Commission for Securities are published on the official web of the Government. The Government must provide free online access to all legislative and normative acts published before June 23, 1990, updated documents in the measure of amendments or completions. The approved document does not institute a term when these acts should be published, nor does it introduce terms when they should be published in the Internet. Therefore, the effects of the law will be observed after publication and the official acts they envisage will be accessible from that moment, accordingly to constitutional norms. However, the technical and financial aspects of implementation of the law have not been established and the Government will unlikely enforce it immediately.

Law awarding supplementary rights to local public administration authorities regarding the legalisation of some juridical documents. It establishes the right of the secretary of the mayoralty to legalise the ownership right to value shares from patrimony of reorganised agricultural enterprises. The law aims to exempt owners from certain additional taxes that they must pay to notaries, and to facilitate the land consolidation process.

Law for the modification of the law on Governmental Agent. The law adopted in the second reading establishes the procedure of payment of compensations established by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and establishes the general conditions for exercising of the right to regress against persons whose actions served as ground for the ECHR judgments or signing of an agreement on amiable settlement of the cause.

Law on vine and wine. The new law regulates aspects of the classification of seeding material; it institutes a new classification of wines and establishes the particularities of attributing their origin names. Also, it establishes a series of rules on particularities of sale of wines both on domestic market and for export. Distinct chapters describe the implementation of the state policy in the area, evaluation of conformity of products, sanctions for violation of the law. It also includes provisions on setup of a special fund to sustain the creation of vineyards, which will include taxes for transactions with wine production.

Law on importation of granite and granite items for reconstruction of the military memorial in the Chisinau municipality. The law exempts 1612 square metres (350 tons) of granite imported by the public association for the protection of rights of Slavs Vece from VAT. The enterprise Cariera de Piatra, general entrepreneur of reconstructions financed from the state budget, will pay for the imported goods and it will be also exempted from VAT for reception of the delivered goods. According to law developers, the granite is imported from the Russian Federation due to its low price compared with prices on the Moldovan market, while the VAT exemption saves the public money. The parliamentary opposition factions have raised some objections against this draft, saying that the granting of public money to a public non-profit organisation, headed by a Communist lawmaker who drafted this law, for administration is inadmissible. They invoked the fraudulent, non-transparent and lobbyist nature of the transaction carried out without the direct participation of the Government and relevant public administration institutions. The sums that will not be collected to the state budget, if the law is implemented, are estimated at about 700,000 lei (54,000 dollars).

Decision on results of control on execution of the law on making and circulation of ethyl alcohol and alcohol production. The adopted document establishes that the relevant central bodies and economic agents do not fully execute the legal provisions in the area, while the main violations are: the lack of a daily record of raw material stocks for every provider, of processed raw material and quantities of made alcohol production; lack of a single electronic record system; sale of large quantities of counterfeit alcohol production on market. This decision obliges the Prosecutor-General’s Office and the Centre for the Struggle Against Economic Crimes and Corruption to investigate the cases of harming of the state and consumers after non-execution of the law, to report on taken measures to the Parliament by October 2006.

Parliamentary control. Declarations

Questions and interpellations

PPCD lawmaker Gheorghe Susarenco has asked the municipal local council and competent authorities of the Government to examine the dismissal of deputy mayors Vasile Ursu, Fiodor Negru and Petru Svet. He cited the legislation saying that the mayor-general can appoint an ad-interim mayor, but if he fails his tasks, the local council, must name another ad-interim mayor.
PSL lawmaker Oleg Serebrian has asked the Foreign and European Integration Ministry to report on education of functionaries of the Moldovan diplomatic missions and relevant ministry. He asked information regarding the number of persons who have diplomatic education, speak a language of international circulation, while their knowledge of the language must be demonstrated through international recognised certificates.
PCRM lawmaker Grigore Petrenco solicits the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry to report on situation in student hostels of the State Agrarian University, invoking bad living standards for students and insufficient measures taken by administration of the educational institutions in this regard.
AMN lawmaker Ion Plesca has invoked many cases of illegal holding of some persons by employees of the Interior Ministry who are released later without any explanations. The parliamentarian has asked the Prosecutor-General and the Interior Ministry to report on the number of held persons, number of persons who were released meanwhile, number of cases filed against these persons and number of cases delivered to the court. We remark in this context that under Article 165 of the Code of Penal Procedure following persons can be held for 72 hours:
- persons suspected of committing a crime punished by law with a detention term longer than one year;
- the suspect who violates the preventive non-detention measures against him, if the crime is punished with detention;
- convicts whose punishment was conditionally suspended or who were released before term.
A person can be held on basis of: a report; order of the penal investigation body, ruling of the court. The released person cannot be held again on the same charges and the held person must be handed in a certificate indicating the person who held him, ground and hour of holding, ground and hour of release while being freed.
AMN lawmaker Anatol Onceanu has asked the Government to report on measures of evacuation of the NIT Company from its headquarter in the 53 Hincesti street. Earlier, the Government has asked all private companies and public institutions based in that building to leave it by late 2005. According to the parliamentarian, the TV Company NIT was part of institutions that were summoned and threatened to be sued, but it still reside the building though the location contract expired in late 2005.

Declarations

Declaration of the Moldovan Parliament regarding the artificial worsening of tension in the Transnistrian section of the Moldovan-Ukrainian state border. According to the document, the Parliament expresses deep concern with the dangerous evolution of situation in the Transnistrian region of the country. It was established that the illegal Tiraspol administration has labelled the measures that Moldova and Ukraine have taken in compliance with the December 30, 2005 Joint Declaration of the prime ministers as an “economic blockade on Transnistria” without any reasons and there started the “self-isolation of the region, where a true hysteria against entrepreneurs and its entire population is generated.” Lawmakers condemn the “subversive actions of the Tiraspol authorities against constructive efforts of the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States aimed to legalise the economic activity of the eastern districts of the country and to destroy the criminal component of this activity.” The Moldovan Parliament regrets that the Russian Federation does not appropriately judge the subversive actions of the Tiraspol authorities, that some political forces and politicians from Moscow fall under influence of the Tiraspol separatists who are obsessed of the fixed idea to pull out Transnistria from Moldova, to legalise the territorial division of the country, to turn the region into a true ghetto, and its population into a living shield in order to cover the criminal affairs of some persons. The parliament noted that “the entire responsibility for the recent dangerous developments in the region rests with the separatist leaders in Tiraspol and their protectors from other countries.”
On March 3, when the new customs regime was introduced at the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, the group of lawmakers representing the Social Liberal Party (PSL) released a declaration on evolution of the social-political situation in the east of the Republic of Moldova, in which it described the efforts of the Moldovan authorities aimed to settle the Transnistrian conflict as failed. According to developers, the existence of the Transnistrian problem has made Moldova join the CIS, raise the Russian at the level of an official language, promote the idea of permanent neutrality. PSL proposes the establishing of a “de facto” border zone all the long of the limitrophe area, the setup of some control and customs stations all the long of the border. Also, it proposes to change the mode of settlement: “freezing of the conflict”; “use of some measures of economic influence aimed to discourage the separatist regime,” “improvement of the economical-social condition on the right bank of the Dniester river.”
Declaration of historian lawmakers regarding the intentions to suppress the national history course and implementation of the integrated history course instead of this subject. It invokes persecutions of the authorities and especially of the Education Ministry, dismissal of teachers who oppose the testing of the integrated history course. In 2002, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommended the setup of a memorandum on studying of language and national history. In reply, representatives of the majority faction described the statement of their colleagues as “political” and assured that “the new integrated history concept is being tested with the support of the Council of Europe and some competent international institutions.”
The faction representing the Our Moldova Alliance has released a statement on situation in agriculture. It indicated some decisions that worsened the state of things: the introduction of the 20-percent VAT for agricultural production and hardware, material resources; two-fold rise of fuel prices in 2005; reduction of the initially foreseen subsidies for sustenance of high value-added branches (sugar beet, vegetable growing and livestock) and introduction of a hard and uncertain VAT repayment mechanism; implementation of hidden policy of support of the so-called agricultural production cooperatives only; blocking of traditional sale markets of agricultural production through Government decisions, which laid many obstacles on way of exportation of agricultural products, halving the prices, etc. AMN asked the Government to take some urgent actions including: to exempt farmers from land tax and contributions to the state social fund of agricultural fields for a five-year term; to extend the term of 5-percent VAT for pyrotechnic and horticulture production in kind and livestock production in kind until 2011; to exempt pesticides and fertilisers, agricultural hardware and spare parts imported for agriculture from VAT; to present the Agriculture Policy for 2006; to create an intervention fund for cereals; to purchase and distribute seeds, Diesel oil and lubricants needed for agricultural works for free or under shape of technical credits, under advantageous conditions; to compensate higher prices of oil products; to relieve the export (by abrogating the July 26, 2004 Government Decision # 834 on some measures regulating the acquisition and exportation of cereals and cereal products and guaranteeing the access of agricultural production to sale markets), etc.

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