The statesmen round table

(transcript of recordings)

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI, Director of the Environment Protection Department at FOLOS Consultants and formerly State Secretary in the Ministry of Waters, Forests and Environment Protection:

Good afternoon and welcome to a debate on matters of environment with distinguished statesmen, whom I will now introduce to you:

• Mr. Varujan VOSGANIAN, Senator and President of UFD.
• Mr. Anton VLAD, State Secretary in the Ministry of Waters, Forests and Environment Protection, representative of the National Christian Democratic Peasant Party (PNTCD);
• Mr. Adrian Gheorghe MARINESCU, State Secretary in the Ministry of Transports, representative of PNTCD ;
• Mr. Adrian CIOCÂNEA, PHARE expert and Vice-president of UFD, formerly State Secretary in the Ministry of Reform.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

Allow me to start this discussion on political matters with implications in the environment protection area by launching to the participants the following challenge. As we already know, environment protection in Romania has developed after the year 1990; we are here today at 10 years of existence. In the 10 years of activity, the Ministry has had different leaderships, we could say that we crossed all the political spectrum of Romania; we started in 1990 with a leadership which then represented the Romanian Ecological Movement, we continued with representatives of the Social Democracy Party, after that we had a leader appointed by the Democratic Party and today we have a PNTCD-nominated minister. Practically, the question is how we see our activity after 10 years of existence of environment protection activity, after such a diverse political management. We notice that structures were formed after the year 1990, which began to develop, but very slowly, in the water sector and also the forests sector; practically we are talking about the administrative reform at the level of the two above-mentioned sectors, namely the reorganization of the former Autonomous Administration « Romanian Waters » - now the Water National Society and of the Forests National Administration. Do you, politicians, consider that what we achieved so far is enough? Do you consider that, if the first steps have been made, it is enough, mainly in terms of Romania's accession to the European Union? We do know that in the context of EU accession and legislation approximation we are rather far behind. We also know that meeting European standards in point of environment protection will account for more than half of the costs of the entire approximation, which Romania has to put in place with a view to European integration. What are the political parties suggesting? Which is the policy they intend to develop in this area and, most importantly, how do they think to integrate the environment issues in the general political context?

Varujan VOSGANIAN

Thank you very much. I will share with my colleague Adrian CIOCÂNEA this short speech and I will talk about something that is apart from the environment problem because I think that the main environmental problems are not in the environment, but somewhere else. The first question was how I saw the results of these 10 years. I am a healthy man, I go very seldom to a doctor, but recently I went to a doctor because a very strange thing was happening to me: I was sneezing and my right eye was shedding tears. The doctor said it was an allergy caused by the garbage that exists in Bucharest  and that  more and more  citizens of Bucharest presented all kinds of strange illnesses, because of the garbage in the town. And if in Bucharest there is garbage, there is no point in seeing what is going on in the rest of the country; I will give you an answer in a very concrete way; in Galati Square, for example, there are heaps of garbage and it is situated in the zero area of Bucharest. So, the answer is very simple. In point of environment, very little has been done at the institutional and policy-making level. Let me approach another issue and then A.C. will continue by referring precisely to the environment policy. The environment policy presents a characteristic feature over other types of policy. The environment policy is the place where the common sense of a government most obviously comes out, meaning  that the respective government interweaves the short term horizon with the medium and long term one; the fact is that the environment policy has some immediate challenges, but at the same time it should support a sustainable perspective by resizing: resizing of the labour market, industrial resizing, energy structures resizing, etc. It's enough to tell you that today in Romania we have no specialized institute for economic forecast. Look how an entire country, with research institutes, with ministries, government, local administrations, Parliament, Legislative Council, Constitutional Court has no economic forecast institute whose analyses are public knowledge; and if we don't have a clue about the forecasted levels for the next year, how shall we make forecasts concerning the resource balance, the resources evolution over the next 10, 20, 50 years? In Romania, in the past three years, crazy things happened in point of economic forecasts; I'll give you three figures, from the past three years, that are not, it's true, from the environment field, but we come up against them every day: in 1997 the forecasts that make the basis of the budget construction (I'll tell you later who made these forecasts) were of 90%  inflation rate and -2% GDP negative growth; we had -6.6 for GDP and 158 % for inflation; in 1998 we had the inflation rate forecast of 25% and 0 growth for GDP - we had -7 GDP and 41% inflation rate; in 1999 the inflation rate forecast was of 25%, the forecast on  GDP 0 -  we  probably have a GDP decline of -5 and an inflation rate of 50%. For the year 2000 there is still no forecast. We do have, however, a forecast department in the Finance Ministry. So the person who should make the forecasts on the basis of which the Ministry should elaborate the budget is the Finance Minister's subordinate. We quote the forecasts of the Economy Institute in Vienna, of the World Bank, of the Bank of England but we have absolutely nothing of our own. Well, if we don't know what we will do next year, how can we know what we will do in 20 years time? That was the second point I wanted to make.

The third point: in Romania there is no clear resource evaluation, there is no vision regarding  resource consumption structure in 10 or 20 years and there is no kind of policy able to redirect resource consumption. These things are not so complicated ; I'll give you a concrete example: in Romania hemp, colza, linseed gradually disappear and we import hemp ropes from Bangladesh and from other countries from the same area; nobody is concerned about a stimulation policy in these fields; they are giving coupons to all land owners without asking them if they decided to cultivate, what they decided to cultivate and if they are using the coupons or they are just selling them to a Turkish truck-driver. In Romania we do not finance the production and we do not finance certain productions. Do you know how I would solve that? Starting from tomorrow I would cancel coupon distribution. Furthermore I would give support only to farms over a certain surface. We do not finance gardeners from the budget, we should finance farmers and we should direct the fiscal policy in order to have more colza, more linseed, more sugar beet. I also want to tell you about the high energy intensity of the Romanian industry. We vainly try to make environment policy when for a unit of GDP we spend 5 times more than France. Imagine a man who fills the stove with logs and leaves the windows open; what is the point of asking him  where  he gets the logs from? No matter how many logs he would get, in the room it will still be cold. It's the same in Romania. We use Siemens-Martin kilns - go and see  Resita, see how the furnace workers look like when they come out of the shift, or look at Copsa Mica or other places like that. As long as we are not concerned with the decrease of energy intensity, why are we discussing about an environment policy?

The fourth point: until we do not place our economy on a market basis, we won't be able to build a clear environment policy. The state will never enforce a real environment policy unless it is forced to do it. And even if it is forced, it will never have the money required and it has been proven that it has no idea of how to spend the money from other sources. We need to create the necessary resources for sustaining an environment policy; as long as in Romania the public utilities belong to the state, the primary sectors are almost totally state-owned, also the transports, the industry is 70% state-owned, we won't be able to build an environment policy. The National Bank Governor announced  a big victory: finally, the banking sector is mostly privately-owned; do you know how? Through the liquidation of BANCOREX. If we continue to liquidate state banks, indeed the private sector will own 100% of the banking sector. But is it a big victory of reform to liquidate a bank? Until we do not privatise the distribution, until we do not clarify the public propriety status, until we do not lease and privatise the hydro energetic systems and other types of extraction, we won't be able to build a sustainable environmental policy and we'll beg the Parliament for the 1% Environment Fund and for more funds from the Budget. Unfortunately, in terms of mentality emancipation, a large part of the political class has not reached the level of understanding an environment policy; so far the environment policy is still on the Parliament corridors, it hasn't yet entered the debate hall.

The fact that we are here two representatives of UFD, a vanguard party that looks towards the future, proves that you have a friend in us. After a colleague from PNTCD speaks, I would ask A.C. to talk in very concrete terms about the environment policy and sustainable development.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

Mr. State Secretary, what is your opinion?

Anton VLAD

Yes, it is very easy to be in opposition today!

Varujan VOSGANIAN

Do you want to switch? Tomorrow you will go in opposition and we will come to power!

Anton VLAD

The fact that from 1990 till now so many political forces took turns in this new ministry may be a positive thing because they came into contact with what environment administration means; of course, it can also be seen and it is seen as a negative thing because environmental policies need continuity and we need not only to elaborate strategies but also to apply them. We are very good, we are experts in everything, more recently we passed from football to agriculture, forests and environment - it is good that we are experts in everything, but we also have to be consistent. Today we discuss about policy and environment - the political line of a party regarding the environment. I wouldn't want to individualise my party's environment policy but I do think that the way we started is the way to follow. We started to involve the civil society. Never and nowhere a party or a ministry, a central administration will ever succeed unless it co-operates with the civil society. Our ministries sometimes seem to be in an ivory tour beyond the windows of which there is actual life and we open the window from time to time to take some fresh air; many of our specialists did not live in the tumultuous life beyond the window. The only solution is to co-operate with the civil society, with all its structures. It's one of the solutions through which Romania can succeed - involving the civil society in decision-making. But to do that, the civil society needs access to information, qualified information, and the capability to process the information, and I'm talking about all kinds of information, not only environment-related one. What we managed to do in the first place is a co-operation with the church. We will never succeed to educate the population in the environment protection spirit if we don't involve the church. Christianity means life, and the quality of life and environment means life. We tried to involve the church in all our actions regarding life quality. Of course everybody wants to have the school involved as well - we want that too, but the Ministry of National Education has a somehow independent direction; there is no efficient or profitable co-operation between industry and environment, education and environment, transports and environment as there should be. So, each one elaborates its own policies; there are inter-ministerial commissions but their efficiency is not the desired one; as the senator emphasised - not necessarily in our favour- environment protection problems are not of the concern of the Ministry of Environment alone, they are the concern of all who wish to protect life. The big pollution problems today in Romania begin to transfer to the urban settlements. In a way, it is the result of industrial activity decrease; at the same time, we have agreed on compliance schedules with the old enterprises (of course, a reduced financial capacity prevents us for reaching our goals in due course); the newly founded enterprises are performing from the environment protection point of view. The problems that are truly serious occur in urban settlements that not only do not stop pollution but increase it out of indifference, non-involvement and considering pollution as the next-door neighbour's problem. Alienation in urban communities may be one of the causes, but this doesn't justify our attitude. We have had successes, over a relatively short period of time, in the field of protected areas. In 1990 somebody said that environment protection means less industrial pollution; it's entirely false; from biodiversity conservation to pollution control, life quality and moral pollution, everything is environment protection.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

Let me try to focus the discussion on more or less economical aspects of the issue we are considering today. We have been talking for many years about sustainable development. To be able to talk about the sustainable development concept, we must talk about mentality changes at consumers and producers level, including changes in the management of natural resources. All these lead to a sustainable development. It is known today in the world that there have been two general approaches of environmental policies for sustainable development. The first and the one, which produced fewer results, is the regulatory policy, the so-called "Command and Control" - we make the law and we "force" people to observe it. The second approach is the use of economic instruments in environmental policy. Following the implementation of these two approaches, an essential improvement of environment factors quality in developed countries was reported. Today there are discussions on joining the "Command and Control" policy with economic instruments. We know that there are four instruments of environmental policies, namely the market (using the signals we get from the market), market creation by privatisation and decentralisation, regulation (legislative activity) and the public participation. Do you think that what we are doing in Romania is an environmental policy in line with these international tendencies known to have positive results in the field?

Anton VLAD

May I come in at this point of the discussion? Of course, you can't be exhaustive in a few minutes; the environment-related problems in Romania won't be solved as long as the businessmen will not regard the environment as a business. The environment can be a business. A group of Japanese, representatives of administration and employers, said in a meeting that around the city Amsterdam there are 382 companies that deal in wastes; probably small companies with less than 20-30 staff; beyond the borders of our country environment problems are solved through businesses. A ministry or two or a thousand cannot deal with this problem as long as on the other side, the one of the employers, there is no concern for the issue. The Government must generate solutions to produce businesses in the field of environment.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

In the first place we should generate legislation in line with these tendencies and here we may discuss the extent to which the Ministry adopted the kind of policy that is able to integrate environment policy in the general economic development of the country. I understand that Mr. A.C. would have something to say.

Adrian CIOCÂNEA

I would like to explain a point of view that is common in the UFD and which comes from a more general vision. Our vision on the concept of sustainable development is the consequence of a very coherent thinking on the following points: as a result of the big discovery of the Brunland Commission that we should focus more and more on the environment without neglecting development, people have been put in a new situation: they have been obliged to co-operate in three important areas (economical, technical and environmental). This was the big victory, but in fact each one has responded in his own way. The technicians responded very fast to this challenge by forgetting about polluting technologies and concentrating on ecological ones. It was a change of concept that has been difficultly perceived by businessmen who want to change the production structure without stopping production. Let me give you a few conclusive examples related to the fact that, today, wastes are seen as a resource and even landfills can be a resource. Not to speak about more subtle aspects like trade with polluting products. Romania had a surplus of freon, it could consume or emit a certain quantity of freon; it negotiated this quantity in favour of Italy which, in exchange, implemented a modern technology at the refrigerator factory Gaesti. EBRD also invested in this factory for a good reason, because the technology was ecological. So, things are very subtle and we can have a market of polluting materials. That much about technology. The economists have been obliged to restructure their way of thinking and invent new disciplines like ecological-economics, which considers that economy is a component of the ecological system or bionomy, in which the technical information means to economy what genetic information means to the human body; so, they have tried to adapt. Those who permanently gave marks, in a positive sense, were the ecologists, because they clearly knew which point of view may be correct and which not. The economists, because they generally deal with development, had the difficult task of redefining the concept of consumption. There are even modern ideas which say that we should give up on the idea of consumption like it was till now and we should resize it quality-wise; it all boils down to the fact that we might be better off if we produce a little more than we need, not necessarily much more. This is a very difficult issue; it is a challenge for economists and, implicitly, a challenge for the market economy. This effervescent discussion has produced the two types of instruments or policies, the enforced ones and the freely accepted ones. In the whole world, to take the example of financial markets, there was at first a regulating period followed by a deregulating one. This is the way for Romania too: we pass through a period in which we need regulating; after we have learnt the rules and we know how to use them, we will need the other step, deregulation. The regulating part is the legislative activity you mentioned before. There is an acute lack of regulatory authorities in the environment field; some progress was made, we should not deny it, but I'll give you an example that can become dangerous: the moment the forests and the hunting areas will be given back to the former owners, the regulating authorities will have to pay much more attention to the way the ecosystem is administered. Regulating is very important in general for every field; not only the wet areas or forest ecosystems should be regulated but also areas that are adjacent to them.  Fiscal policies work because they are based on the principle "the polluter pays". Unfortunately, in Romania this does not work so well because no matter how good the environment agencies are, they are incapable of putting in place an appropriate measuring and monitoring system.  For example, around Boston, U.S.A, an integrated monitoring system operates which knows immediately when and where emissions are higher than normal and the respective fiscal policy is applied immediately. There is no such thing in Romania and I am puzzled by the fact that environment permits are issued in the absence of any connection to what is actually happening in the respective enterprise. Once again I want to say that this is not an institutional vice, it is just related to the period we go through; no matter how many monitoring installations we have, no matter how much we improve the instruments (life cycle analysis, impact evaluation and environmental balance sheet), we can't make  the system work unless we have the appropriate regulations. The next step would be deregulation accompanied by fiscal policies. At the present moment we know that environment in Romania is a Cinderella; the problem is that we don't know how to tap on foreign resources for environment. Western countries have some obsessions that are very important to them. Ecological corridors between Romania and other countries could in fact be a resource for us- we do not use it; the type of ecological agriculture that we can apply was not used as a negotiation instrument with the European Union; we wanted the others' goodwill and did not use our assets as a pressure instrument.  My opinion is that at the present moment we are in the regulating phase with some fiscal policy application, but there is no way it can function because there are no resources. What would I do if somebody asked me whether the environmental policy in Romania should be opened to the outside because it is the only place resources can come from? Opening to the outside is in fact a negotiation and a negotiation is based on what we have; if we do not know exactly what we have, in order to be able to communicate with the outside, we are forced to accept what we can get and to implement a few projects; some projects have been implemented indeed, but in those areas I was talking about earlier that are important to the Western conscience, namely protected areas. As a conclusion, at the present moment we have no resources, no regulations, no long term policy specific to environment and this is a field where if you don't have a long term policy you have no policy at all. I was wondering, "how many tones of petrol will Romania refine?" 30 million tones per year. This means that we will remain a country with basic industrial branches. Then, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, under the Kyoto Protocol they will tell us that we let go too much CO2 in the atmosphere and we will have to reduce it. What are we going to do  with the refining industry then?

There are a series of evaluation methodologies for short and long-term impact; in the West they are now talking about evaluation of strategic impact; strategic means long term. We don't have these things. I know one thing: if I don't have money - I learn (when I don't have money I stay at home and I read so that when I finally have money I will know what to do). This is what I think we should do now while trying to repair or to patch a few things.

Varujan VOSGANIAN

I would like to add something. The environmental policy is affected by the three deficits existing in Romania: the economic deficit, the institutional deficit and the democratic and mentality deficit. I will make just one reference to the institutional deficit. As long as in Romania the environment will be mixed up with forests and water, we have the clearest sign that the leaders don't know what they must do in point of environment. Because between environment, water and forests there is a terrible conflict of interests. As long as the environment department is subordinated to the Minister of Water and Forests, it is clear that the essence of environmental policy is lost and that environmental policy is made outside the government, despite the government and without its support.

Anton VLAD

I want to contradict you, I hope with some success. Forests are an environment factor; water is an environment factor.

Varujan VOSGANIAN

Have you ever fined the Minister of Waters and Forests that is your boss? The environment protection agency, just like the Competition Office, should be an ogre of Romanian economy. For example when that child died in the lake, did you go to the Water Minister to fine him?

Anton VLAD

I agree with you. The answer to your question may be different and it is different because the administration of the three sectors must be done together, an integrated administration. We have inherited an institutional framework and we try to modify it in order to make an institutional reform.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

Practically we started to debate on the separation of the two functions: resource administration and regulation. You were talking about the regulation phase...

Adrian CIOCÂNEA

We are making confusion and I want to emphasize the point made by Varujan VOSGANIAN. When we talk about natural capital infrastructure, we talk about forests, for instance. When we talk about resources, we talk about wood. When people realize exactly what natural capital infrastructure and resource administration mean, then ROMSILVA, as it is now, would have to disappear because it deals with the resource exploitation and should not administer the infrastructure as well; then the old   stories about what is happening in the forests would cease.  It is about monopoly and here we get into economic matters. I repeat for the last time, there is a fundamental difference between natural capital infrastructure administration and resource administration.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

I want to invite Mr. State Secretary Vlad to tell us what has been done in this direction.

Adrian Gheorghe MARINESCU

I'm neither a big statesman nor a big philosopher in environmental policy; I can't agree with the catastrophic vision of Mr. V.V.; I admire him every time he takes the floor, as he speaks very well; I wish for him to be elected, to become a prime minister and to prove that there can be an environmental policy which is not connected to the economic environment, the industrial development, with the general state of Romania. I think we cannot talk about an environmental policy outside the specific economic context. We have the resources that the economy provides us. Of course that at this point the discussion should go into the economic field; but it's not our subject, so we stay in the environmental area. My opinion is that the environment perception, the knowledge, information, even mentality in our country are undergoing changes even if environmental issues have been discussed only after 1989. In this context, I'm thinking about the numerous symposiums, activities that were organized, the NGOs that have been set up and people who found out about environment issues. So,I wouldn't go along with this catastrophic vision and I contradict V.V. with the environment protection national program itself. Minister Romica Tomescu, following its elaboration by the interministerial committee, presented it and Government approval is pending. It contains a series of actions and programs which are not original and derived only from our wish of writing something; they are in consonance with the programs and actions unfolding in Europe. Of course there is a big difference between their resources and ours, between their measuring methods and ours. Let's take a look at what we' have done. We shouldn't say that we haven't done anything and that we are so far behind others. Of course it will be very difficult to reach the point that others have already reached. I will present something concrete regarding the two directions, command and control and economic measures respectively, at the Ministry of Transports. We take very seriously environment-related issues and each time a project is envisaged, a strategy to solve environmental problems is elaborated. Let's take the example of the highway Bucuresti - Constanta that was designed a long time ago; now when the works are to be resumed in the year 2000, one of the conditions is the environment impact. For the first time in our country a study on the environment impact of a road will be produced. The same will be done for a train car washing station in Giurgiu and the remediation measures in the harbor. In the field of energy consumption in the railway sub-sector, we modernized hydraulic and electric diesel locomotives with more performing Caterpillar and General Motors engines which are the world leader in terms of energy consumption and emissions.  The Ministry of Transports also targets emission reduction in road transport; the main objectives are the evaluation and monitoring of the existing situation, a thorough check of newly registered vehicles and maintaining the motor vehicle performance. Let me give you some figures. Transports account for a significant part of toxic emissions: 75% of non-methane hydrocarbons, 31% of carbon oxide, 45% of nitrogen oxides. Among the transport types, the road transport accounts for 94% of non-methane hydrocarbons, 97% of carbon oxide, 42% of nitrogen oxide, 73% of nitrogen dioxide, 73% of carbon dioxide and 96% of methane. As you can see, these are very high percentages and that is  why the policy of the Ministry of Transports  targeted prioritarily this field. Of course, the total polluting emissions produced by road transport are smaller compared to the EU given the 5 times smaller number of vehicles and the 2 to 4 times smaller mileage per year. However, if we compare per capita average and not absolute values, the average per inhabitant is of 29.1g / capita of polluting emissions in the European Union, and 32.6g/capita in Romania. So the difference is not so big; on the other hand, larger differences are reported for various particles in terms of 1000 USD of GDP: 85 g/1000 USD in the European Union versus 215 g in Romania (2,5 times bigger). Kg of toxic particles/motor vehicle: 2.2 in the EU versus 5.3 in Romania; lead: 2.22g/1000 USD of GDP in the European Union versus 10.7 in Romania; lead/ motor vehicle: 55 versus 264. As a result of the thorough periodical technical checking, it was noticed that the number of motor vehicles with technical defects decreased from 72% in 1995 to 65% in 1999. I must tell you that the technical inspection workshops of the Romanian Motor Vehicle Register have been equipped at European standards in order to standardize and increase the level of technical inspection and maintain the performance parameters of registered vehicles.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

I understand there are achievements in the pollution control in the field of transport.

Varujan VOSGANIAN

Mr.State Secretary, let's make things clear! I'm not at all catastrophic, I have high hopes that it will be different from the way it is now. If I am catastrophic and unrealistic and you are realistic, maybe you can speak about the highway that will be resumed in the year 2000. Maybe you can explain why 20 billion lei from the budget go to a builder in Fundulea who does almost nothing, because at the Budget Commission Mr. Basescu categorically refused to answer the question. Secondly, you are saying that, in an effort to control pollution, we are now making hydraulic railway engines; but what would you like us to do? Coal-driven engines like in the beginning of the century? You are saying that the number of vehicles with defects decreased to 2/3, that being a big victory against pollution. If it is indeed a big victory against pollution, and the Dacia works daily produce defective cars and we announce now, at the last moment, that DAEWOO cars comply with EURO2 while ROMAN SA has not even started the conversion to EURO2, that means that you, Mister State Secretary and me live in separate worlds. You have an entirely different vision and maybe mine is wrong. I promise you that now I'll go to the library and read again the program to which we contributed as well; it seems that we live in different worlds and maybe we belong to different generations. I am disappointed as I understand that in environmental policy the biggest victory is that we produce hydraulic railway engines, that we decreased by 5% the number of defective cars and that we have 5 times more lead per capita than the European Union. Thank you.

Adrian Gheorghe MARINESCU

Senator, I'm sorry but you seem not to have understood my point;if you have patience and you follow my words, I will prove to you that we are talking about different things; yes, indeed we live in different worlds: I'm talking about transport and you are talking about politics. They are two different things. We are not making hydraulic railway engines; we modernize the ones we have. We should electrify, but there is no money to do it. Give us money from the Budget to continue electrifying, for example the Cluj - Oradea section and others.

Dragos ILIESCU (ICPET)

 I wouldn't want the Senator to leave because I would like to ask him a question. We deal with atmosphere protection. Briefly, I would rather be anything in the world but Minister of Environment. Why? Because I would be everyone's enemy. Because I wouldn't let them cut a tree, I wouldn't let them throw away dirty water. Besides the exceptional achievement of the Ministry of Environment to disclose information on the environment to the public, we need two more things: first, the legislation must be coercive and that was the question for the Senator: When will the legislative forum support coercive environment protection legislation? Just like the Ministry of Internal Affairs makes you pay a one million lei fine for exceeding legal speed, a polluter like PHOENIX Baia Mare will also pay a million lei fine for exceeding the level of toxic emissions and destroying or affecting the lives of 100 000 or 400 000 inhabitants in that area. Fines are comparable, effects are very different. Secondly, the people in charge of environment protection must have pity for the environment, not for the economic agents. The economic agents must understand that they have to pay, or even risk closure, if they want to make a sludge storing area that affects the phreatic aquifer Ploiesti - Bucharest for one hundred years. There are technologies in our country, for example LAFARGE, able to burn the sludge with as much as 80% water. There are companies that know how to treat waters and obtain sludge with 20% water. These companies cannot live in the absence of a coercive legislation that enforces the principle "the polluter pays".

Varujan VOSGANIAN

Mr.State Secretary may tell you when the Government intends to update the level of fines. Fines are established by the Parliament by law, but it is the responsibility of the Government to update them. However, I do not think that corruption will be curbed in Romania if authorities run after an embittered office worker from the Ministry of Reform who was less skillful than others and took the money in the Ministry instead of taking it outside the building or that environmental problems will be solved by increasing the fine from 1 000 000 to 10 000 000 lei, that is by coercive ways rather than preventive ones. This isn't the solution. Do you know what will happen? I'll tell you what happened to colleagues who came from other parties: they had a lot of controls, from the Environment included, as the environment authorities are to a large extent used as an instrument of political pressure. I have spoken about constructive solutions, about privatization and leasing of primary resources, about market consolidation. Concerning fines and the way they are applied, I will be pleased to let Mr.State Secretary  tell you when the Government intends to update them  and when authorities that give fines will do just that and not get involved in politics. I have a lot of examples of abuses in this field but I don't want to bother you now because we are in an ecological environment.

Anton VLAD

Of course somebody has to pay for all the failures. I will assume myself this responsibility. I want to add something to the issue of the three fields in one ministry. The institutional reform we promoted targeted a unitary control  in the three sectors: the environmental control, the water quality control and the control of forest administration. We managed to place water control under the authority of the environment protection agencies. We did not manage to do the same with the control of forest administration  because of the Legislative authority; I'm not saying who was wrong, they or we. Thus, at this moment, we are forced to have a territorial forest administration direction separated from the Environment Protection Agency even if we did propose to have just one agency for the control of environment, hunting , water quality and  forest administration. We failed and we should assume a certain ministerial responsibility, but the matter was stopped at the Parliament. These days the Directions of Forest Administration as territorial state authority are set up. It's a first time in the past 60 years; it's a new institution that has clear relations with our ministry. I would also like to refer to hunting. For about a year a new territorial control structure has been operating. In the territory. Romania did not have state control for forests or hunting - it had only in environment. The Forests National Administration was for a long time assimilated with the state authority  while it was just a superintendent of the state property. Today we have started the process of setting up territorial  state authorities to make up for the administrative deficit irrespective of the form of property of the forest. An efficient state authority should enforce a good administration of forests whether they are state or privately owned. Continuity is very important in environmental policy and especially in foreign relations.  I think that we succeeded not to wipe out what others before us have done; we succeeded to develop new co-operation relations because the environmental policy is similar to the foreign affairs policy; our ministry is, in a way, the second Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I do not wish to comment on whether the Romanian Government attaches such importance to environment, but we should all keep in mind that accession to the European Union has a major environmental component. All the large financial programs scheduled to begin with the year 2000 have major environmental components because our integration in the EU is not  possible in the absence of significant progress in the field of pollution control.

Adina SURUGIU-RELICOVSCHI

Mr. Adrian CIOCÂNEA, is there anything you wish to add?

Adrian CIOCÂNEA

Speaking about creating a new institution in a market economy context, I will give you an example that you know very well because it's very topical today: the State Land Agency, that agency that the Ministry of Agriculture has been trying  to promote through an Emergency Ordinance or a Law.  The agency was initially conceived as a body, not necessarily a state one, that does nothing else than technically watching over the way in which the land is exploited. When agriculture land in leased (and as we talk about resources we can extrapolate to forests), the Agency technically checks if land is well worked, if there is no resource over-exploitation. If you move the subject in the forest area, we can speak of over-exploitation of forest infrastructure. Such as agency should not do anything else. When the agency becomes a state authority and other responsibilities are added like controlling, inspecting, maybe even privatizing, then the essence is lost. The old vices of state intervention will occur, like inherent corruption and dysfunctions which are later corrected by setting up new structures. So, from the point of view of the market economy, if we want to build such an institution, we must do it on the private principle, namely the State commissions the public service to an Agency, the Agency does private management and reports in accordance with pre-established performance criteria. This is the solution. If you work in this domain and for sure many of you have participated to international programs, you know that each international program provides money for a project, but there is a management firm that, within the same budget, is responsible for the program implementation. In case that an independent firm evaluates the contractor and does not find a complete report presenting the results on stages, then the program is stopped. This is the way it must be done with this type of institutions; at this moment they are just increasing an already over-sized state administration.

Anton VLAD

I think I was misunderstood. A state institution in the territory is the Environment Protection Agency. We wanted to add new competencies to the Agency, namely the control of forest administration, of hunting and of water quality. We didn't succeed. In any other civilized country in the world, the State is an authority; it controls and supervises sensitive fields like agriculture and forest administration.

Adrian Gheorghe MARINESCU

Allow me to finish; I started to present methodically the way from where we were to where we are now in point of regulatory activity. So we introduced EURO2, we took measures of stopping the import of cars older than 8 years, we issued the Minister's order concerning the introduction of EURO2 which, as of January 1st. 2000, is in force also for domestic producers. Of course there will be problems, at ROMAN and others who did not take measures in time, even if the announcement was made two years ago. We issued the order on EURO3 that will come in force gradually beginning with 2004 for imports and 2005 for domestic production - enough time for all producers and importers to take adequate measures. These regulations are accompanied by the state control that is the Ministry competency. That much about regulation and control. This may not lead to the expected results, whereupon we thought about the other set of measures, the economic ones. In the Inter-ministerial Council of Road Safety we elaborated a draft Government Decision granting fiscal facilities to those buying ecological cars. We also thought about instituting a 10% price difference between leaded and unleaded petrol; also exemption from customs taxes for the import of ecological engines EURO2 and EURO3, of spare parts and catalysts; we also envisage car tax reduction and a 30% reduction on the road tax. Of course, the proposed Government decision entails some costs to the State Budget, namely a cut on revenues. No matter how wonderful our plans are, they will be hard to implement if we don't have the necessary resources. We can invent privatizations, we can invent all kinds of agencies, but we should not forget that the rhythm of progress in the field of environment is the rhythm of economic progress in general.