According to Ponta, the new provisions must be thoroughly discussed and the Government should pass the new bill by April 12 at the latest.
The prime minister said Government officials will go to Strasbourg in April for talks on the bill with the ECHR experts so that the final shape of the bill would meet the ECHR standards.
According to the calendar previously announced by the prime minister, the Government was to adopt the new bill in its meeting on March 20 and seek a confidence vote in Parliament on the bill on March 26. Delaying talks on the new bill implicitly means putting off its adoption for a later date.
Thorbjørn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, commended the Romanian Government on its decision to allow the ECHR experts to analyze the bill before adopting it.
The draft act drawn up by the Government sets that former owners of nationalized homes in Romania who can’t get back their homes will receive points with a face value of 1 leu (EUR0.22), considering the value of the building, which they can use to buy other homes at auction or change them into currency after 2017.
Homeowners may convert into money only 10% of the points yearly, reads the bill regulating compensation to former owners of homes seized during the communist regime, as per the draft act obtained by Mediafax. The points may be used in auctions to be organized weekly for buildings included in the National Fund. Beneficiaries who want to change them into money must prove they participated in at least three such auctions and bought no property. The points cannot be converted into money earlier than 2018.