Presidential "tourism", a strictly secret affair

The trips abroad of President Klaus Iohannis are a state secret, as a result the expenses incurred during them can only be traced to the presentation of the budget execution, but even there non-specifically, not broken down, it emerges from a response sent by the Presidential Administration following a request by journalists from News.ro, who wanted to know what were the costs of the official visits made last month (November 14-23) by the head of state to Tanzania, Kenya, Cape Verde and Senegal.

The officials of the Presidential Administration claim that "detailing the necessary expenses for these external trips, by destinations, periods and categories, is not possible, since this operation may generate situations of violation of the legal provisions regarding the protection of classified information, because a consistent part of the data and information requested by you are classified".

In the document presented by the cited source, it is stated: "Consequently, the requested information is exempted from the free access of citizens, in accordance with the provisions of art. 12, para. (1), lit. a) from Law no. 544/2001 on free access to information of public interest, with subsequent amendments and additions. (...) Regarding the expenses related to the external trips of the President of Romania, we specify that they are available through the transparency framework in terms of budget execution. Thus, information about the annual budget of the institution is published on the website of the Presidential Administration, a fact that allows any interested person to become aware of the expenses representing the external trips of the delegations led by the President of Romania, every year. At the same time, the centralized situation regarding the monthly budget execution of the Presidential Administration, for all titles and budget chapters, including the amounts spent on foreign trips, can be consulted on the website dedicated to ensuring the transparency of the use of public funds".

Sending the media representatives to the budget execution to find out how much the costs of President Klaus Iohannis' African tourist tour amounted to does not solve their request, because in the budget execution the respective expenses are not broken down for both journalists and ordinary citizens to see where did the resources allocated from the state budget to the Presidential Administration go and to ascertain whether these expenses had a positive result in Romania's economic relations with the respective states.

Unfortunately for voters, the legislation in force is favorable to President Klaus Iohannis. The Fiscal-Budgetary Responsibility Law establishes transparency obligations regarding the state budget only for the Government and the Ministry of Finance, and the Regulation on the Organization and Operation of the Presidential Administration does not contain any reference to the transparency of spending the amounts allocated from the public budget, but only to the need to fit expenses within the limits approved by the Government and Parliament through the state budget law.

Moreover, in the Presidential Administration regulations it is clearly stated that the Secretary General of this institution is the main authorizing officer of credits and has duties in the field of protection of classified information. Basically, this official together with the president Klaus Iohannis and his advisers what information is classified or not. From the provisions of the regulation and from the response received by colleagues from the press, we note that practically the General Secretary of the Presidential Administration has secreted everything related to the trips abroad made by President Klaus Iohannis this year, including the expenses incurred from the amounts allocated from the budget Of the state.

Regarding the trips abroad of President Iohannis, the cited source also shows that "the trips of the official delegations led by the President of Romania are carried out on the basis of service contracts for the execution of special flights, concluded in accordance with the provisions of the Regulation on the organization, preparation and execution of special flights, approved by Government Decision no. 755/1998, with subsequent amendments and additions".

The employees of Palatul Cotroceni specify: "According to the requirements established by the previously mentioned Regulation, the information related to the organization and operation of special flights falls under the national legislation in the field of the protection of classified information, in a context in which the contracts for the provision of services for the execution of special flights are documents that contain classified data and information in their entirety. As a consequence, no information contained in or associated with them can be communicated, being exempted from the free access of citizens, in accordance with the provisions of art. 12, para. (1), lit. a) from Law no. 544/2001 regarding free access to information of public interest, with subsequent amendments and additions, in conjunction with the provisions contained in Law no. 182/2002 on the protection of classified information, with subsequent amendments and additions", says the Press Office of the Presidential Administration.

We show that the official delegation of President Klaus Iohannis in the tour of the four African states included, in addition to Mrs. Carmen Iohannis, the presidential advisers Bogdan Aurescu (former foreign minister), Alexandra-Maria Bocşe, Daniela Bârsan and Delia Dinu.

We remind you that before this official tour in Africa, President Klaus Iohannis also carried out an official tour in South America in the spring of this year (April 18-26), on the Brazil-Chile-Argentina route, with hard-to-quantify results, and during the 6 - March 10 was in Singapore and Japan. On both of these spring tours, the presidential delegation traveled by luxury aircraft, the costs of which far exceeded those of chartering an aircraft from one of Europe's long-haul airlines.