THE MINISTER OF FINANCE CONTINUES THE DEBATE OF THE MISSING FISCAL CODE What does Ioana Petrescu care if the dogs bark at her?

In a caricature of public debate, the officials of the Ministry of Public Finance (MFP) insist on discussing a draft of the new Fiscal Code, which they are, however, keeping secret and only leak small chunks of it at conferences organized by an economic publication.

Information of a public nature, which concerns every Romanian taxpayer, becomes the subject of monopoly, thus helping some achieve people gain an edge or material benefits.

After minister Ioana Petrescu "presented" the Fiscal Code to approximately 100 people three weeks ago, but without making the draft available, yesterday, at a new event, similar to the first, a few articles that seemed to be part of such a draft were again presented and handed to the participants (even though those pages bore no mention of the source), compiled under the title "Building taxes".

It is worth mentioning that all these actions, together with the ones which the young minister that came in from Harvard claims were debated by "the business sector" and "the academia" are taking place despite the fact that no document that mentions the Fiscal Code has yet been posted on the website of the Ministry of Public Finance.

This, together with the terms of the Law no. 52/2003, concerning decision transparency in the public administration, in Chapter II "Procedures on the participation of citizens and legally created associations created in the process of drawing up legislation and of decision making", in the first section, in article 7 paragraph (1), states: "In the procedures for the drafting of legislation public administration authorities are required to publish an announcement concerning this action on their own website, to post at its own headquarters, in a publicly accessible area and to send it to the local or central mass-media, as the case may be. Public administration authorities will notify the draft laws to every individual that has filed a request for the receipt of this information".

Ioana Petrescu said, on the first conference on the issue, that the drafts of the Fiscal Code and of the Fiscal Procedure Code would be posted on the website of the Ministry of Public Finance..."this year". The official repeated the fact that the projects are being "widely debated with the business and academic sectors", and that they are being discussed ""with everybody involved" and she added that once a nearly final version exists - "this year" - it will be posted on the website as well, to be debated in the Government and in the Parliament.

Even though she was asked, Ioana Petrescu did not explain why the drafts couldn't be debated at the same time by the businesspeople and by the rest of the taxpayers in this country.

She didn't respond to our inquiries on why the two drafts were taken down, about two months ago, from the website of the Ministry of Public Finance.

Mrs. Ioana Petrescu is just minding her own business, in a manner that seems to have nothing to do with a Harvard graduate - she is just like the "moon", while the rest of us, who are unhappy with her disregard for legal regulations and for decency, are just the "dogs" barking at her.

What can you do, youth doesn't always mean being pure and well-meaning...