The capping of local taxes stipulated in the budgetary-fiscal policy for 2021 was declared unconstitutional. A decision to this effect was taken by the Constitutional Court on September 14 following a challenge filed by former PAS MP Dinu Plîngău, IPN reports.
The ex-MP said that by the way in which the challenged provisions were adopted, the principles of democracy, political pluralism, local self-government and the rule of law were violated. In particular, no consultations were held and the fact that most of the local public authorities adopted budgets and planned activities for a four-year period wasn’t taken into account. The challenged provisions diminish the local public authorities’ capacity to manage the public affairs based on plans and strategies designed on investiture and when adopting the local budgets.
According to Dinu Plîngău, the then opposition could not put questions and could not state its opinion on the changes. “These amendments were followed by a wave of protests staged by representatives of the local public authorities, who said that local self-government is this way undermined,” noted the ex-MP.
As a result of deliberations, the Constitutional Court held that the challenged provisions place the local elected officials in the situation in which these cannot enjoy an appropriate maneuvering space in fiscal matters. “The freedom to set the local taxes is an important indicator of local self-government. The Court considers the local public authorities should have real powers to be able to implement policies. The imposition of general upper limits on local taxes for all the territorial-administrative units without taking into account the economic situation and the specific circumstances of each case can turn out to be ineffective,” said CC president Domnica Manole.
“According to CALM, which is the representative body of the local public authorities, the consultations were held in a formalist manner. The challenged draft law was sent to the Congress two days before the time limit for providing the appraisal. The two-day period offered to the local public authorities and to the representative association for appraisal cannot be considered standard useful time.”
The decision is final, cannot be disputed, takes effect when it is adopted and is published in the Official Gazette.
