On Wednesday, the Government is to approve a draft decision on the extension of the state of alert on the Romanian territory starting with December 9, 2021, including the measures to be applied during this period to prevent and combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca mentioned a series of measures that were being taken into account, both regarding the proposals adopted by the CNSU (National Committee for Emergency Situations) Decision no. 111/2021, which established new rules on quarantine for persons arriving in Romania between December 10, 2021 - January 8, 2022, as well as others necessary to avoid the crowds that are usually formed during holidays, so that the population will have the necessary time to do their shopping safely.

According to him, the possibility of giving up wearing a protective mask outside, in places that are not crowded, is also being analyzed.

The bill will also establish the areas in which the government will be able to issue ordinances during the parliamentary holiday in January 2022, namely: finance and economy, development, public works and administration, home affairs, agriculture, and rural development, transport and infrastructure, health, research, innovation and digitization, culture, youth and sports, extension or modification of certain terms provided in normative acts with the force of law.

A draft law on some protection measures for people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities will also be debated at first reading at the same government meeting on Wednesday. Also in the first reading, a draft emergency ordinance regarding the modification and completion of some normative acts and the extension of some terms will be discussed.

The draft aims to amend the normative acts regarding the granting of holiday vouchers, so that they will be granted over 2022-2026, while the validity period for the vouchers issued between January 2019 - December 2020 will be extended until December 31, 2022.

The government meeting's agenda also includes a draft decision approving the allocation of an amount from the unemployment insurance budget for the payment of the monthly supplementary income that benefits the dismissed persons from the National Mine Closure Company - Valea Jiului S.A.

A memorandum on the approval of the results of the prioritization of significant public investment projects to be used in the process of drafting the state budget law for 2022 is also to be adopted.

According to the memorandum, initiated by the Minister of Finance, Adrian Caciu, the principles underlying the prioritization of significant new or further public investment projects are: the opportunity of the project in the context of sectoral or national strategies; economic and social justification; affordability and financial sustainability; arrangements for implementation/performance in implementation; the period remaining until the completion of the public investment project, for further projects. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Florea, editor: Mihai Simionescu, EN - author: Cristina Zaharia)