Government approved a package of legal amendments that will significantly reduce red tape, saving entrepreneurs and the state about 50 million lei. Significant changes are proposed in various areas: labour relations, digitalisation, IT and electronic communications, state control of entrepreneurial activity and others.

According to the new provisions in the field of labour relations, the employer is no longer obliged to pay holiday pay at least 3 days before the employee leaves on leave. The allowance may be paid on another mutually agreed date, but no later than the date of payment of the salary for the month in which the leave was granted. This change is intended to bring a balance in the rights and obligations of the employee and the employer.

The Labour Code will undergo several changes, with the employer’s obligation being transformed into a right, for: scheduling annual leave; notifying the employee of the date of leave; excluding the pre-contract of individual employment; and keeping internal regulation.

It is also proposed to abolish the “blue medical passport”, a bureaucratic procedure that was putting 30 thousand people employed in the HORECA sector in difficulty. When hiring and periodically employing people to work in the catering sector, the medical examination will be done in public or private medical institutions and the costs will be covered by the budget of the Compulsory Health Insurance. Thus, the document issued by the medical institution will replace the individual medical report or “blue medical passport”.

In the field of digitisation, IT and electronic communications, the new regulations stipulate that electronic communications network installations are not considered immovable property unless they are permanently attached to land. And separating them from buildings and land does not change the use of the latter.

In the area of state control of entrepreneurial activity, an improvement is proposed for small and medium-sized enterprises that will limit corruption. For the first 3 years of the business, the control body will have the right to carry out inspections, but will not have the right to apply sanctions or restrictive measures, except in cases where serious or repeated offences are committed by the entrepreneur.

“The regulatory changes aim to reduce bureaucratic barriers and reduce the administrative burden. Inspection of economic agents is one of the main problems for entrepreneurs, especially for start-ups, as they carry the risk of abuse and corruption,” said Deputy Prime Minister Dumitru Alaiba, Minister of Economic Development and Digitisation.

Furthermore, an improvement of the remedy procedure, as provided for in the Contravention Code, is proposed. More specifically, the enterprise in the early stages of its activity is vulnerable to committing several violations, which do not present a major risk, but which are liable to be severely sanctioned, thus putting the business at a standstill.

In addition, the law will include the obligation to register the reasoned opinion of inspection in the State Register of Inspections and the obligation to submit “checklists” with the announcement of inspection. This will give advance notice of what is to be checked and reduce the number of unplanned inspections that are not justified. At the same time, the inspected person will have the right to document the inspector’s actions by photo and video.

Code of Enforcement will also be amended, introducing the digitisation of relations between bailiffs and commercial banks, which will reduce administrative costs and time consumption, which will enter into force within 6 months from the date of publication in the Official Gazette.

All these regulatory changes were drafted by the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitisation with the support of experts from the United Nations Development Programme and the Secretariat of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova.

The draft HG can be consulted here.

The Secretariat of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister is supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funded by the UK Government’s Good Governance Fund.