The USA gets involved in the compensation of former asset owners

American experts have advised the government in elaborating the draft of the law concerning the compensation of owners of properties who were abusively seized by the Communist regime, according to Mark Gitenstein, the US ambassador to Romania.

The solution proposed by the Romanian government for this thorny issue was the Proprietatea Fund, but because of the way it was created and of the flurry of lawsuits that followed, to say nothing of the slowness in the awarding of the compensations, the European Court of Human Rights required Romania to speed up the compensation process by July 2012. An inter-ministry committee which was created at the end of 2010 is working towards that goal.

Mark Gitenstein said yesterday, on the anniversary of one year since the Proprietatea Fund has been listed on the Stock Exchange, that he is aware of the working variants of the project. "The diplomatic community is keeping in touch with the government on this subject", the US ambassador said. "We have brought an expert from the US over to advise the Romanian authorities. We care about this process and we will continue to get involved. I think that Romania will comply with the decision of the ECHR". The US ambassador declined to express an opinion on what the optimum solution would be to make the retrocession process more efficient.

He did insist on the idea that in his opinion, the compensation process has no connection to the Proprietatea Fund. At the end of last year, the Romanian government had been left with a tiny stake in the Proprietatea Fund and would have still been required to find a solution for the thousands of former asset owners who still need to be compensated.

Dorina Danielescu, the president of the National Authority for the Restitution of Properties, and the coordinator of the Inter-Ministry Working Committee set up for the issue of the restitution of properties, said that the new project proposes the setting of clear deadlines for the completion of the process for the restitution of properties in kind, as well as for the awarding of compensation, on a local and central level.