Press briefing by Prime Minister Florin Cîţu and Minister of Environment, Water and Forests Barna Tánczos at the end of the Cabinet meeting of August 11

[Check against delivery]

Florin Cîţu: Good afternoon. In today's Cabinet meeting, we had several important legislative documents, some of which are in the first reading. I would first mention in the first reading, the Emergency Ordinance on approving the National Investment Programme 'Anghel Saligny', an investment programme for local authorities through which roads will be paved, sewerage and water supply works carried out, a programme with a budget of 50 billion lei for a minimum of six years. In my opinion, I said this when I took this office, it is unacceptable to have localities in 2021, without paved roads, without sewerage or a water supply system. There are basic things we should do or could have done so far. They should have been done ten, twenty years ago. We will do them in this term of office.

We had an emergency ordinance in the first reading that will allow the supplementation of the amounts from PNDL, where appropriate, where money is needed to close investments already started. We did for those from PNDL 1 early this year. We had in the first reading the emergency ordinance referring to updating prices for public contracts. A very important thing should be mentioned here: I think it is the first example in the EU where such an ordinance exists. Why is it different and important? I very much wanted that this ordinance has clear criteria for the increase and decrease of prices. If prices increase, contracts should be amended, the same if prices decrease.

I said that through Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) we will build hospitals. Today, during the Cabinet meeting, we have approved a decision through which we will make a hospital in Sinaia through the Ministry of Development, it began some time ago, but the financial resources, as well as the political will, were missing. Today we found both, financial resources and political will, in order to make it. The investment alone is almost 121 million RON, the Sinaia townhall participating with a co-financing of 12.3 million RON. The hospital will have 6 wards with 138 beds, and the execution period of the investment is estimated at 60 months. An important thing in the field of investments: a student dorm at Bucharest Politehnica University.

The investment's value goes up to approximately 120 million RON, of which 116.2 million RON are financed by the Ministry of Development, the rest being from the Politehnica. The execution period of the investment will span 12 months. A very important thing, two projects we wanted to present as they are important.

In today's Cabinet meeting, and that is why Minister Tánczos Barna is today, we had several discussions and projects that the Minister will present regarding landfills, waste management and so on. I asked the Minister, together with the Minister of Internal Affairs, to present for next week, a report on a scheme that was presented to me, through which the waste is deposited in Romania under the title 'temporary'. This must disappear. We will have a note next week and we will no longer allow such schemes in Romania. Two ordinances from the legislative package on storage, waste management and ensuring the treatment of waste before disposal were approved in today's Cabinet meeting. We discussed the third draft ordinance, it will be approved next week, and we have not had all the approvals yet. The Minister will go into details. These are very important documents. At the same time, I told the Minister to convey to the Environmental Guard that we have not discussed any tax that we will introduce this year. I don't know where this information comes from. We talked about discouragement schemes, not tax introduction.

Another piece of legislation that has been and is very important for the labour market: doubling the number of foreign workers allowed to work in Romania in 2021. What we have doubled is the quota of people who can work in Romania from the non-EU space. Justification - we need, for the implementation of investment projects, a figure, we need 160,000 people, so far as I understand. From the beginning of the year, we have witnessed an increase of 2.77%, including 29,995 openings repeatedly advertised by employers. So the number has doubled, from 25,000 to 50,000. Once again, the demand is for over 160,000 people, workers.

I have noticed a public discussion about new employees in the Government Working Structure. I also asked the Control Body to present a report, things are not like that. This year, we established seven new institutions in the Secretariat General of the Government (SGG), because this government has fewer institutions than other governments and that Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova became part of SGG. There are seven new institutions. At the same time, it is a structure with two vice prime ministers, including their structures. So, there was no employment, just institutions that were included in the Secretariat General of the Government, institutions that were elsewhere, and now are included in SGG. These were the legislative documents I wanted to speak about. (...)