Governing parties clash over car tax

Romanian Liberal PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu said on Monday that by introducing a tax for the first registration of cars the Government tried to prevent the transformation of Romania into “Europe’s garbage bin”.

His statement as the leader of the Democratic Party, Emil Boc, the other senior group of the governing coalition in Bucharest demanded the suspension of the tax as it was applied in a different form from that that passed parliamentary debates.

The first registration tax is a new tax applied starting January 1 this year when a new fiscal code came into effect in Romania and has been presented as an environment tax. It has various values for used and new cars and is higher for older cars going through first registration.

It has sparked a series of controversies as the EU expressed concern about it being in line with European laws in this regard.

Three days ago, Romanian Finance minister Sebastian Vladescu said Romania would hold talks with the European Commission on the amount of the tax, but would not discuss its elimination.

And today PM Tariceanu said “we will analyze EC notifications at governmental level and we are obviously ready to take account of these observations, but I don’t think it is in the interest of Romanians to buy used cars from Europe. We are not the garbage bin of Europe, let that be clear”.