ANAT and AIR proposals for drafting future government decisions on measures affecting the free movement of persons

At the moment, ANAT harshly criticizes the new travel rules in Romania, mentioning that it seriously affects the free tourist movement of Romanian citizens and of foreign citizens who want to visit Romania. And we can't ignore them when we see that a vaccine is treated in so many ways depending on the country of origin or how an unvaccinated person has the right or not to shorten the quarantine depending on factors independent of the pandemic. Not to mention the serious violations by the Romanian authorities regarding the PLF.

ANAT and AIR have proposals for drafting future government decisions on measures affecting the free movement of persons:

• 1. Elimination of differentiated access conditions in Romania depending on the geo-political space, the only acceptable criteria being based on epidemiological criteria; To the extent that this possibility could not be fully adopted, we propose in a first phase the standardization of access conditions in Romania, both for travelers coming from EU Member States and for those coming from the territories that are on the two lists of above (respectively those that have adopted the digital certificate system as well as those on the updated “white list” of the European Commission);

• 2. Elimination of additional conditions for testing in the case of immunized persons (by full-scale vaccination or post-infection recovery) resident in the Member States of the European Union or in the states and territories listed above;

• 3. PCR testing in other situations, at the destination within 24 hours for residents, respectively at the place of origin for non-residents. Specifically, Romanian citizens (residents) not immunized or arriving from destinations outside the geographical area for which the principles of the green certificate work, will be required to test within 24 hours of entering the country and upload the result on the PLF platform and non-residents who wish to travel to Romania and are not immunized will be required to present the negative result of a PCR test upon entry into the country (possibly, they may even upload it to the electronic platform that generates the "passenger's location form" PLF). In these situations, in case of a possible positive result, the Romanian citizens will be quarantined in their own country and the non-residents will no longer make the trip, remaining isolated in the country of residence. As a result of this measure, the fear of isolation risks in a foreign country disappears and cases of quarantine (requiring supervision by the authorities) and sick leave (requiring financial effort on the part of employers and then the state) are significantly reduced;

• 4. Establish the obligation to present the location form (PLF) upon entry into the country and eliminate the option to complete it within 24 hours of arrival. It has been seen during the 45 days since implementation that the option of subsequent completion has brought only an endless series of fines that, for the most part, will remain unpaid (since we are talking about either non-residents or people who are difficult to enforce) and some of them will flood the courts. This measure did not bring anything good, but only unnecessary efforts to prosecute, to issue acts of sanction, to pursue the collection, to prepare the defenses in court, etc. And the purpose of introducing that application was certainly different from the possible addition of additional revenue to the budget, the costs of which sometimes exceed them.

We support vaccination, we support the rules of protection, but we also support the normality and the application of correctly created and correctly applied and administered rules.