Financial Press Review, 12 May

The Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled ‘We adopted the PPP law, now employers bring the money! If this is the approach, then it is a mistake.’

’The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) means that the government provides a land and then sits idly by waiting for investors to bring the money, to carry out the project and then to share the benefits with the state, although the majority of government officials really believe this.’

’Public-private partnership requires government financing, government guarantees or indirect funding. The PPP is much more than implementing an idea, as it involves sharing risks,’ the newspaper noted.

Under the heading ‘How much is a villa or a house?’, the Curierul Naţional wrote that ‘in the first quarter of this year, the prices of houses and villas have fallen faster than those of flats, both in Bucharest and most of the other major cities of the country,’ according to a survey conducted by imobiliare.ro.

The lowest house prices were in Constanţa, followed by those in Bucharest, while Brasov was the only city where prices have risen.

’While waiting for economic growth, houses continued to cheapenţ, the Ziarul Financiar headlined on the same topic.

The Dilema Veche magazine included a file on ‘How we reside in our town?’, including some of the opinions from a conference in Sinaia, on the ‘Architecture of public space’.

The expressed opinions were not gentle at all. Because of the systematic overthrow of the values, ‘people without culture have come to dictate how the country’s architecture is done: individuals with four classes were able to impose their architectural model,’ said Gabriel Liiceanu inter alia.

’Recently the country's Parliament discussed some of the architecture’s rules. If I was well informed, all the decisions that have been taken turned out to be absurd,’ Andrei Plesu said.

’Good thing were repealed and were legislated. One of the monstrosities that was legislated is what, in the professional jargon, is called - quite disgracefully - Urban Zone Plan.’

‘The Urban Zone Plan became a cancerous network of normative acts - as they say in Parliament – that invalidates the Urban Master Plan, leaving room to certain initiatives and tips that make the master plan to be absolutely useless.’

‘The fact that the Romania’s Parliament approved the legislation and that such infinite exemptions are allowed to the master plan it shows a form of irresponsibility to which we are accustomed, in fact, but we’d rather not discuss it. (...)’

’It can be built anyway, you can negotiate any kind of terms related to the building’s height, density of the site etc. without any risk, for there have been passed laws that reduced the risks, there have been passed laws that made possible the suspension of the prison sentence, but there have also been passed laws that set ​​convenient limitation periods,’ Andrew Plesu noted in his article of the Dilema Veche published under the heading: ‘Legal monstrosities and urban chaos’.

Under the title ‘Concerns about Greece further affects euro’, the Bursa approached a topic also covered by the Ziarul Financiar in an article entitled ‘Greece is made ​​to ensure the new money with real estate assets from the European Union and the IMF.’

’In order to receive the second support package, Greece will have to implement a bold program of privatization’, the paper summarized the situation.

Translated by: Iulia Florescu

MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University