Unless it urgently modifies the auto tax and gives back the sums it has collected, Romania risks financial sanctions from the European Union following the possible start of an infringement procedure and numerous other suits filed by car owners, including by those that lost in court at first, Mediafax informs.
The government received the warning from the Justice Ministry’s judicial experts that analyzed the issue at Premier Emil Boc’s request, an internal government document obtained by the aforementioned source shows. Jurists explain that litigations concerning the concordance between emergency ordinance 50/2008 on the auto tax and the acquis communautaire came against the backdrop of legislative instability, considering that the said ordinance was changed seven consecutive times in just two years and that the European Court of Justice judges labeled the initial version of the auto tax an indirect discrimination towards imported second-hand vehicles and towards those already in circulation in the country at the time the tax came into force (July 1, 2008). At the same time however, the discrimination was present in the emergency ordinance’s subsequent variants too.
