Chairwoman of the Parliament’s Legal, Appointments and Immunities Committee Olesea Stamate, one of the authors of the draft law on the state tax, voted in the first reading, says that “if something needs to be changed – we will do it by the second reading”.

Stamate stressed that the legislative initiative is the result of 5 months of work by the people who were part of the working group, pointing out that “it is a necessary project and it is good in concept”.

“And we certainly invite all those who criticize it today to participate in the public debates that we will organize at the end of January,” the MP wrote on her Facebook page, where she spoke about the legislative initiative that “some lawyers opposed”.

According to the chairwoman of the Committee on Legal Affairs, Appointments and Immunities, lawyers are particularly unhappy about the fee for postponing court hearings, which is higher with each postponement. Olesea Stamate points out that in cases where hearings are postponed because the lawyer or client is ill and they “can produce a certificate to that effect”, no fee is payable.

“This vicious practice of postponing court hearings must be stopped. It is often used as a delaying tactic. I understand that probably for those with big money, even the highest fee (of 3 200 lei for postponing the hearing for more than the 3rd time) will not be an obstacle they will not be able to overcome. But certainly the imposition of fees for reasoned requests for repeated postponements will discipline participants in the process,” said the MP.

Stamate also argued that the stamp duty of 200 lei is a minimum cost to cover part of the expenses incurred by the court in preparing the case for trial.

“But the purpose of introducing this fee is not only to cover court costs. It is rather to prevent abusive addresses to the court. We know very well that the courts, like many public institutions, have a set of ‘permanent clients’ who file applications for the sake of filing applications, which will often be declared inadmissible, but for which time, effort and in the end good faith litigants suffer. Secondly, the introduction of this fee encourages alternative dispute resolution”, Olesea Stamate added.