Environment Commission To Ask Romanian Govt to Suspend Eco-Tax for 3-4 Months

Commission president Sulfina Barbu said Wednesday that the measure is necessary in order to improve the law that creates “extreme difficulties” for companies who produce this kind of bag.

“It is unacceptable for a company that produces up to EUR300,000 worth of bags to pay EUR1 million as an eco-tax, a sum which many times never returns to the company, because the law has not been understood properly and is not enforced correctly,” said Barbu.

Representatives of the environment commission took part Wednesday in a round table discussion about the plastic bag eco-tax. Other guests were the representatives of the largest Romanian plastic bag producers, who criticized many of the provisions of the Emergency Ordinance which sets up the eco-tax, and also the minister’s order which contains the act’s enforcement norms.

Company representatives said many stores do not mark the eco-tax on shopping receipts, driving bag producers to lose the money they pay to the state when delivering their packaging. They complained about the lack of laboratories able to certify the fact that some firms already produce ecological, bio-degradable packaging, which should not be taxed.

“We’ll come to a point where a firm that has invested in ecological production equipment has to pay the eco-tax for bags it puts on the market, even though they are ecological, because Romania does not have laboratories that can verify the packages’ quality,” said Violeta Pandelescu, the representative of one producer of plastic bags.

The three-hour discussion also touched technical issues and Barbu requested the setting up of a workgroup, made up of company spokespeople and state institution delegates, which should “carefully” consider the producers’ complaints.

“We need a clear-cut law with fair principles and which does not lose sight of the goal of environmental protection. Seeing as we need time for discussions and considering the fact that there no Romanian laboratories can verify that a firm produces ecological wrappers, we have decided to ask the Government to suspend the ordinance’s enforcement for three, at most four months,” Barbu said at the end of the talks.

Silvian Ionescu, the head of the National Environment Guard (GNM), proposes the suspension of the tax on plastic bags “for a few months”, which he sees as a social measure necessary to protect the employees of the 23 local companies which manufacture plastic bags and which cannot receive authorization as ecological producers.

“There are 23 Romanian producers which make plastic bags on a large scale. Some of them have already purchased equipment with which to be able to produce untaxable, ecological bags. The problem is that Romania lacks a laboratory which can certify that the foil they use is ecological and biodegradable, so they’re in a dilemma”, Ionescu said Tuesday.

At the same time, since plastic bags have begun being taxed, their consumption has dropped drastically, and Romanian firms produce fewer and fewer bags on declining demand.

On the other hand, foreign firms authorized as producers of ecological plastic have a very lucrative market in Romania, stated Ionescu, showing that this state of affairs puts the jobs 5,000 employees of the 23 major Romanian plastic bag producers in jeopardy.

Romania’s former government decided last year to introduce a tax of RON0.2 per bag for bags made of non-recyclable materials, which retailers offered shoppers for free. The tax is charged from companies introducing such bags on the market, both producers and importers. The tax is also applicable for reusable plastic bags and revenues from its collection go to the country’s National Environment Fund.

A survey of the Environment Ministry indicated the average Romanian uses 250 plastic bags per year and the bags are only used for about 20 minutes.

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