Romania, InstituĂľia Avocatul Poporului

Romania, Instituţia Avocatul Poporului

General presentation

An essential step of the Romanian reform was the adoption of a new Constitution in 1991. Different new structures were included in Romanian institutional system and one of them, very important, was the Advocate of the People (the Romanian Ombudsman).

The Constitution establishes, in a very concise form, the basic principles regarding the Ombudsman: role, structure, appointment, powers, relationship with the Parliament and the public authorities. In 1997 it was established by an organic law no. 35, the structure and functioning of the Advocate of the People.

According to the provisions of the Law, the institution must protect the rights and freedoms of the citizens in the relationship with the public authorities. In the course of these activities, the Ombudsman shall be independent of any public authority. In the exercise of his powers, the Ombudsman shall be no substitute for other public authorities. No one shall be able to compel the Ombudsman to obey any instructions or orders.

All activities carried out by the Ombudsman, by his deputies and the staff employed under his authority are of a public nature. Public authorities must communicate or, as the case may be, make available to the Ombudsman, under the terms of the law, any information, documents or papers they have in their possession as may be linked with the complaints lodged with the Ombudsman, while giving him support for the exercise of his powers.

The only body that may control the Ombudsman and his activity is the Parliament. The Ombudsman is obliged to present reports to both Chambers of the Parliament, each year or the request of the Parliament.

The will of the Legislative was to give competence to the Ombudsman only on the public administration.

The number of the complaints received by the Ombudsman Office shows an important interest of the population regarding the institution and the necessity of such a body. In the year 2000 the Romanian Ombudsman received nearly 4,556 complaints, from these 1,441 were received for the department charged with the problems regarding the public order, military services, minorities protection, consumer’s and taxpayer’s rights. From this total number of 1,440 - 110 complaints regard the consumer’ rights, means 7,6% and a number of 95 complaints regard the taxpayer rights, means 6,5%.

Some special aspects regarding consumer’s rights

As regards the domain of consumer’s rights, the most increased number of complaints registered at the level of our institution are those regarding the telephone services and the supply of electrical energy (power), of water and of heat supplies, as well as the postal services.

Citizens’ dissatisfactions towards the telephone services provided by ROMTELECOM refer to the telephone invoices “overloaded” with telephone calls contested by the subscribers. They often represent telephone conversations at the VAT services, effectuated by clandestine connections on the subscribers’ wires, at the telephone numbers belonging to some trading companies which provide certain services and which concluded a contract with ROMTELECOM. Thus, the subscriber is in the paradoxical situation of being unable to prove that it is not him who called at telephone numbers registered in the account of his telephone. All these cases were resolved in favour of our complainers.

Other complaints in this domain also reflect:

delays in the solution of the complaints regarding the installation of the telephones required by the handicapped;
subscribers’ dissatisfaction regarding the increase, done by ROMTELECOM, of the tariffs and prices at the domestic and international basis telephone services;
the subscribers do not completely know the contractual clauses, as they are not integrally included in the contract established by ROMTELECOM;
the existence of some abusive contractual clauses, leading to an imbalance between parties’ rights and obligations.

We recommend to the suppliers for these services to modify the contract according to the EU recommendation in this field of activities.
As regards the supply of electrical energy (power), the citizens were dissatisfied with the institution of the subscription for the home energy consumption and with the unclear content of the invoices.

The same lack of correct information regarding the invoicing operation was also registered in the case of water and heat supplies.

The protection of taxpayers

As regards taxpayers’ protection, we noticed from the complaints addressed to us by the citizens that there were violations of their rights by the Ministry of Finance and their decentralized services, namely the general directions of the public finances, the IRS, as well as from the specialized services within the local and county councils.

The non-observance of citizens’ rights are reflected in:

the unjustified refusal to register and to issue some documents or the delayed issuance of them;
errors in the drawing up of the tax returns;
the inadequate behaviour of some employees within these services;
the delay in issuing the correct solution to citizens’ complaints who cannot draw up legal delays in formulating new complaints or they cannot benefit of the previous legal provisions, because of the legal amendments occurred.

In some cases, the public authorities recognised the errors and they take the legal neccessary measures, but in some other cases the refused to answer, the open files remain still not resolved.

As regards the institution of the local taxes by the local and county councils, we noticed the following abuses:

the lack of a unitary interpretation of the legislation in the domain of taxes;
the lack of a pre-established procedure, of a model by virtue of which local taxes should be established;
lack of regulations regarding the form and content conditions of the decisions issued by the local councils;
pleonastic, confuse and ambiguous expressions, different interpretations questioning the legality of the decisions issued by the local councils;
the non-observance of the delay stipulated by law regarding the issuance of a decision by the local councils, in the domain of local taxes.

After the Ombudsman Office present them our legal arguments, the public authorities respect our recommendations and they keep within the law their further actions.

We would like to underline that, in order to solve some complaints concerning the abusive restraint of the right to free circulation of some Romanian citizens, we co-operated with the Slovene Acting Ombudsman, Mr Aleš Butala, as well as with Mr Jenö Kaltenbach, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Rights of the Ethnical and National Minorities.

Newsletter No. 23