Industry giants cause friction between SDP and ALDE: the Ministry of Energy, controlled by Tariceanu’s party, does not want big state-owned companies to lose corporate leadership

The Ministry of Energy, headed by Anton Anton (ALDE), has rejected an official SDP initiative to remove corporate governance from the largest state-owned companies. The document, made public by USR deputy Cristina Pruna, shows that the Ministry of Economy has begun the management selection procedure for seven of the major companies in which it is a majority shareholder, including Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica and Romgaz.

Corporate governance has led to a more transparent way of appointing members of management in these companies. SDP wants to eliminate this obligation through a legislative initiative which would apply for the largest one hundred companies owned by the Romanian state. This would make the management of these entities opaque and would affect accountability.

„The Ministry of Energy does not support amendment Art. 1 par. 3 in GEO 109/2011 on the Corporate Governance of Public Undertakings for the purpose of exempting the application of corporate governance provisions to companies in which it holds the sole or in which it is the majority shareholder in the name of the State „. This is stated in Minister Anton Anton’s address to the President of the Commission of Industries of the Chamber of Deputies, Iulian Iancu.

The course of the project is extremely complicated: the exemption of companies from corporate governance was „grafted” on a Grindeanu government project that had another object. The draft was attacked by the PNL at the Constitutional Court, which requested amendments to some articles. The Senate has already adopted the draft, and is now being debated in the committees of the Chamber of Deputies.

On Monday, Fondul Proprietatea, a shareholder in many of these companies, warned that the measure „will have a very costly impact on Romanian state companies, the risk being of turning them into black holes,” and characterizes the initiative as „a huge step back in terms of economic credibility of Romania „.

(Traducere: Ruxandra Stoicescu)