The meetings of the Government will be closed at the request of the Cabinet, not the Prime Minister, as earlier. Thus, the online broadcast of the Government’s meetings can be stopped, but the Cabinet pledges to afterward publish all the examined bills on the official website, IPN reports.
A bill to this effect was passed by the parliamentary majority in the first reading. When being debated, the Communist and Liberal MPs expressed their dissatisfaction with this bill. They accused the Government of attempting to reduce the transparency of the meetings so as to be able to plan other schemes to dispossess the state of its assets.
The bill provides that the journalists will find out about the Cabinet’s decisions from the official communiqués of the executive, while the documents from the agenda will be published on the Government’s website.
Communist MP Eduard Musuc asked that this bill be examined publicly, with the participation of civil society. Liberal lawmaker Valeriu Munteanu said the bill is a non-European one and the current Government uses the same practices as the Communist leader Vladimir Voronin.
Co-author of the bill, Liberal-Democratic MP Valeriu Strelet said the executives in the EU member states do not broadcast live their meetings. He added the Government’s meetings must be functional not only for the journalists’ eyes.
The meetings of the Government started to be broadcast live at the beginning of 2010, on the initiative of ex-Premier Vlad Filat.
