Local Government
15
Large Cities
1
Capital Cities
1
Regional or State Governments
0
National Government
0
Other Institutions
2
Local Government
15
Large Cities
1
Capital Cities
1
Regional or State Governments
0
National Government
0
Other Institutions
2
Community
Capital
Bucharest
Population
19 473 940
Language
Romanian
Currency
Romanian Leu
Indexes
Democracy
66
Flawed Democracy
Democracy
Democracy
66
Flawed Democracy
Democracy
Corruption Perception
61/180
Corruption Perception
Corruption Perception
61/180
Corruption Perception
Human Development
52
Very High
Human Development
Human Development
52
Very High
Human Development
World Happiness
48/156
World Happiness
World Happiness
48/156
World Happiness
Legislation Regarding the Regulation of Participatory Budgeting Experiences
The PB in Romania is approved using local council decisions and can be requested by any citizen or local council member. It must be approved by local council between the day when the national budget is approved by the parliament and the day when the local budget is approved. It must not be more than 15 days.
Outstanding Innovation
In Romania all the projects that need public money in one year must be approved at the start of that year. We have the 3x15 days rule for this. In the first 15 days since the national budget was approved in the parliament, the local councils need to decide how they will spend the money per domain. In the next 15 days, the citizens and council can propose what projects are going to be supported in that year and in the last 15 days the final project list will be decided and approved. The Participatory
Budgeting (the process, not the projects that will use it) must be proposed in the second phase (the second 15 days) in order to finish all the paperwork in this time frame. The entire project is general available and any Romanian citizen can use it, update it according to his/her town info and propose it for approval. I worked on a general available local council decision regarding PB so the time to implement it is minimized, meaning the time frame to propose the process to city hall council.
Principal Tendencies Detected
The participatory budget in Romania is at the beginning and there is a “unwritten law” that indicates PB projects must be in one of the domains: parks and playgrounds, safety, urban design, smart-city, culture/social/youth. There is no general report about which domain is more used or not, but while reviewing the projects in the current PB implementation, it is noticed that the smart-city area has the biggest number of projects.
Other Information
The Participatory Budgeting in Romania is at its early stage, there is no specific legislation regulating these initiatives.
Each local council can decide if it will be implemented and the methodology. There are more than 100 requests made to the Council in order to implement PB processes, but most of them are rejected. There is also a map that shows PB initiatives in the country: https://www.mapcustomizer.com/map/romania-bugetare-participativa.
The ones in green are already implemented, the ones in light blue are approved, but it will start within the next fiscal year, due to Romanian public budget regulations.
