The capping of the commercial markup on producers and shops by emergency ordinance, proposed by Prime Minister Ciolacu, is a fundamentally wrong political decision with long-term effects. It is a purely communist measure that ignores a sacred principle: prices are set by the market, not by politicians. This is how the economy was run in the Ceausescu era: with prices and profit margins imposed by the government. The result was a country with low prices but empty shops.
Marcel Ciolacu is not the first populist in Romania nor in the region. In 2015, another PSD prime minister, Victor Ponta, was waging war on supermarkets and calling for a price freeze. At the time, he too spoke of „the pride of being Romanian” and claimed that „Romania is not a Western colony”. Liviu Dragnea was also fighting with the price of tomatoes and cursing the West. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, also froze prices last year, fighting just as hard with the West, which allegedly wants to harm Hungary.
Sound familiar? They are very similar to what Ciolacu put in his own government program: „We fight so that Romanians are no longer the modern slaves of Europe”.
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