Romania’s Chamber of Deputies adopted on Wednesday last week the prevention law, which provides that state inspectors will first issue warnings instead of directly applying fines to taxpayers who don’t comply with the regulations.

The bill was approved with 177 votes for and 26 votes against.

When public authorities with control attributions, such as tax inspectors, labor inspectors, and others, discover irregularities at companies, they will first give warnings and draft a remedy plan. Companies have a grace period to comply with the public authority’s requirements. If they fail to do that, the inspectors will fine them.

Social Democratic Party (PSD) leader Liviu Dragnea, the Chamber of Deputies speaker, wrote on his Facebook page that “Prevention is normality, not punishment!”.

The bill cancels the initial fines in the case of several hundred offenses, replacing them with warnings. These include contraventions from the Labor Code, the law of electronic commerce (for example spams), apprenticeship law, the use of land, health norms, safety of dams, and the fiscal procedure code.

editor@romania-insider.com