CSALB's Paunescu: Energy, Economy Ministries didn't notify CSALB existence to EC; we lose money, know-how

Romania still hasn't notified the European Commission about the existence of any centre for alternative dispute resolution, because the Ministry of Economy and, previously, the Ministry of Energy, did not notify the existence of such centres to the Commission, Alexandru Paunescu, a member of the College for Coordination of the Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution in the Banking Sector (CASLB) told AGERPRES.

"We have a problem related to the alternative resolution of cross-border disputes. It is stipulated in the Ordinance no. 38/2015 and it is somehow the duty of the centres for alternative dispute resolution to be able to solve cross-border litigations. The relevant authority is the one that notifies the European Commission about the existence of alternative dispute resolution centres meeting all the necessary criteria to be able to solve cross-border disputes. Fort several months now this (the institution - editor's note) is the Ministry of Economy. It was the Ministry of Energy before and so on. The Ministries kept changing. We notified the existence of the Centre, for we do operate based on the Ordinance, we do have employees and a headquarters, all that we need in order to operate according to law. We have notified the Ministry of Economy five times, after notifying the Ministry of Energy for the first time in December 2015. We haven't received any answer," said Paunescu.

He specified that Romania is losing both money and know-how by not having the capacity of a member of the resolution centres network.

"Last year, sometime around mid-year, we were asked to make certain clarifications. We did that. Romania has no alternative dispute resolution centre notified to the European Commission. We are the only country, besides Spain, who has no such centre notified, either if we are talking about the CSALB or the SAL-FIN, no notification about any centre, which is pretty weird. We are losing know-how. The capacity of a member of the alternative dispute resolution centres network means know-how, European and regional conferences where you can find out about a lot of things, it means belonging to an international networks and gaining money. For instance, CSALB is currently working to finalize the implementation procedure for a file management software, which costed us 40,000-50,000 euros," explained Paunescu.

He gave the example of an alternative dispute resolution centre that received a similar software for free.

"An alternative dispute resolution centre from another country received this software for free from a Canadian centre. I don't see what could be the reason for the Ministry of Economy to not do this, to not notify the EC at once. We have submitted 30,000 papers, we came back and kept coming back," explained the CSALB official.

CSALB is an independent, apolitical, non-profit entity of a public interest, established by the GEO 38/2015 on alternative dispute resolution between consumers and traders.

The institution manages the necessary infrastructure to provide alternative resolutions to litigations between consumers and the financial-banking and non-banking institutions, outside court, through collaboration with experts from the financial-banking field (conciliators) who, depending on the procedure chosen by the parties, can propose/identify a solution for solving the litigation.