Some Considerations regarding the Financial Autonomy of the Romanian Administrative- Territorial Units

In Romania local autonomy is administrative and financial. If local financial resources are not independent from the state budget and they continue to depend on it exclusively and if financial independence remains only a target which has not been materialized in practice, then the administrative autonomy of the communes, towns and counties will not yield the expected results and will still be limited. According to the European Charter of Local Self-Government the financial resources available for the Local Government authorities should be correlated, commensurate with their duties and their decentralized competences. A recent decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court sustains the same idea. Having in mind this CC’s Decision, the provisions of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and the nowadays insolvent Romanian administrative-territorial units, allow me to underline in this paper my opinion that the financial autonomy is the substance of local autonomy.