Chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Nicolae Ciuca suggests a minimum two-year extension of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan timeframe.
He mentioned this on Thursday, after attending the EPP Summit in Brussels, when asked if he discussed with EC President Ursula von der Leyen about the suspension of the third NRRP disbursement to Romania and if he intends to respond to Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu’s call for a political decision regarding the taxation of SMEs and the issue of appointments to the boards of state-owned companies.
„We did not have the necessary time to discuss these topics in detail. There were just in principle discussions, and political talks are now underway to revise the NextGenerationEU recovery and resilience plans, given that today the situation is completely different compared to 2021, when the decision was made to implement these plans. (…) If I succeed to be elected president, I will also request the extension of the NRRP timeframe by at least two years,” Ciuca said.
The Liberal leader argued that the NRRP never provided for the lowering of the taxation threshold for micro-enterprises to a certain amount.
„There are currently so many SMEs that their combined turnover is in excess of RON 150 billion, and taking this measure will result in the closure of these businesses. I believe that the loss for the Romanian economy will be much greater than the 300 million [euros], which is why I think we shouldn’t play (…) with this. We must see clearly what the loss and what the gain is – when we talk about micro-enterprises we are not talking just money, we are also talking about people who work, people who have jobs,” said the PNL leader.
„It would be absolutely brutal to come up with another measure which would surely affect everything small and medium enterprises. And if the Commission does not understand, I believe that Prime Minister Ciolacu, by dint of his authority, can negotiate together with the relevant ministers all these aspects, because there is no such provision in the NRRP, no figure for the SME threshold,” said Ciuca.
AGERPRES
