The experts asked also for the charge to decrease depending on the length of service.
The Government will set the final value of the first registration charge in keeping with three new requirements of the European Commission (EC), but which will not fundamentally alter the values proposed by the Romanian experts, as recently declared by Attila Korodi, Minister of Environment.

According to Korodi, the three EC requirements were: the establishment of a higher value for the automotive charge in case of vehicles with lower performances from the viewpoint of the EURO catalyser used, decreasing it depending on the length of service within the same EURO group and extending it and setting a clearer procedure for disputing the charge. “I underline that the amendments asked by the Commission change only at a comma level, so to speak, the levels proposed by us,” Korodi said. He specified that following the new requirements of the European experts, the Romanian part is still working on setting the values which are to become legal. He added that Romania would not convey to Brussels any other document related to the amended value of the charge, but it will directly transpose into the legislation the values set in keeping with the new requirements.

The charge could increase up to three times in case of new cars

According to government sources, quoted by Mediafax, the value of the automotive charge could advance even by almost three times in case of new cars. Thus, if the current charge for a new car under EURO 4 polluting norm, and with an engine of 1 400 – 1 600 cubic centimeters is slightly over EUR 100, it could go further than EUR 400 based on the new formula. At the same time, it decreases once with the car’s length of service, and the case is that for the same vehicle, but with two years length of service, the charge would be lower by 15 per cent. Also, in case of a new EURO 5 car with an engine of 1 600 cubic centimeters, the first registration charge would amount to EUR 460, and it decreases gradually depending on the car length of service. A vehicle of the same type and with an engine of 1 900 cubic centimeters will be registered against the payment of a charge close to EUR 1 000. The newest EURO 3 cars with engines between 1 400 and 1 600 cubic centimeters will be registered against the payment of a charge close to EUR 1 000.

The level also decreases in keeping with the car length of service. The value of EUR 1 000 increases in case of EURO 3 vehicles depending on the engines’ power and then it decreases, within the same group of engines, in keeping with the length of service.

The same calculation modality is applied for the other EURO polluting norms, but also in case of non–EURO cars. Based on the new calculation system, the highest value of the charge is up to EUR 5 500, being valid in case of a non–EURO car with an engine of over 3 000 cubic centimeters, with a length of service of around 10 years.

The data presented are not final values, and they may undergo slight modifications.

The Chamber of Deputies Speaker, Bogdan Olteanu, has recently declared that Romania could not eliminate the car registration charge, as the EC would expect, since its interests differ from the first.

“Should this charge be abandoned, 250 000 persons would become jobless and we cannot afford this. Romania cannot phase out this charge, because its interests differ from the EC ones,” Olteanu said. He mentioned that 17 of the EU Member States have an automotive charge and its level, in Hungary, for instance, is much higher than in Romania.