Adoptions draft on the last meters

published in issue 3092 page 3 at 2004-01-21

Bucharest - The draft of the law regarding the rights of the children and the adoptions is almost completed, and might be passed by Government next month, and then sent to Parliament.

The head of the National Authority for Child Protection and Adoption, Gabriela Coman, says that the European experts in adoptions, who were in Bucharest early this week, did not have major objections to the content of the draft.

Romania needed the agreement of the experts of the European Commission, prior to sending to Parliament the legislative package, which is mandatory in order to lift the moratorium on the international adoptions set in October 2001. Gabriela Coman says that the European experts had however a few recommendations, connected not so much with the content of the law, but with its application.

“The experts estimated that the report to be worked out in connection with the draft could be the final one. The project could be on the table of the Government by mid-February, and approved by Parliament until end May,” says Coman.

Initially, as announced by the middle of the past year, the law package had to be approved until the end of 2003, in order to lift the moratorium as of 2004. “People wonder why it took so much to finalize the draft law. There are many new elements, and also many things that have to be regulated. The fact that it took so long until we rounded it off will be understood when the content of the law becomes known,” said Coman.

Apart from the regulation by law of the children’s rights, the law also establishes that all the adoptions will be made exclusively through public institutions, and supervised by the state, without any involvement of the foundations.