Fast-food products and beer "could be charged"

Through the new health draft could be introduced tax on fast-food products and alcohol beer, as they represent an unhealthy alimentation which raises the mortality in certain cases and, respectively, and an alcoholic product, has declared the new Health Minister, Vasile Cepoi.

"Through the new health draft we try to introduce tax on unhealthy products like fast-food which affect the healthiness and, also, on alcohol beer.

"There is an increased mortality on certain diseases caused by unhealthy alimentation and it would be normal that these products be overtaxed in order to reduce their consumption. Also, beer is an alcoholic product and, as the other alcoholic products are overtaxed, it is normal that also alcoholic beer enter this category", declared Vasile Cepoi.

The Health Minister argued Wednesday that the vice tax is applied also in other countries and that there wasn’t in Romania another tentative to impose this tax.

"There was a tentative that failed. Now we discuss on resuming it. We will apply the same regulations as in other countries", declared Vasile Cepoi.

Fast-food tax, planned since 2010

A first attempt to introduce this tax was made by the former Health Minister, Attila Cseke.

He wanted to introduce tax on fast-food products since March 2010.

Introducing the fast-food tax was also in the authorities’ attention also in 2011, but it was postponed because it was too hard to implement.

The authorities declared then that introducing the fast-food tax would be targeted in support the national programs for health.

"The list with the non-recommended food products which would be taxed could include the products with a very large quantity of fats, the hyper concentrated sweets and the carbonated drinks, being excepted dairies, meat, pizza, shaorma and mineral water", said in 2011 the State Secretary Adrian Streinu-Cercel.

Introducing the fast-food tax could lead to increases in food products on average by more than 20 percent, but also the redundancy of 36,000 people, namely 20 percent from the food industry, drew attention the employers in 2011.


Translated by Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University