The “Save Romania” Union has submitted a draft law that obliges public institutions that own cars to install GPS tracking and monitoring systems on them so that they can no longer be used by employees for personal purposes.

According to the USR project, institutions that do not install GPS on their cars will no longer be able to deduct fuel costs from the budget and risk a fine of up to 50,000 lei, according to a press release sent by the party on Saturday.

“Thanks to this initiative, we want to solve the problem of using cars of state institutions for personal purposes. If we look at the local administrations that have already implemented this measure, we can see that they have reduced fuel consumption by at least 40%. This means that in almost half of the cases, the cars of state institutions are used illegally. Although this is not yet happening, environmental protection and the thoughtful and transparent spending of public funds should be a priority for all public administrations and institutions of the Romanian state,” USR Deputy Brian Christian, the initiator of the project, said in a press release.

The project is based both on the need to reduce public spending and to protect the environment by reducing fuel consumption and pollution, as well as on examples of best practice so far, the source added.

“One example is Kimpulung Musel City Hall led by USR Mayor Elena Lasconi. In 2021, the mayor of USR installed GPS on city hall cars, and the results were visible in a short time: in 2021, fuel consumption decreased compared to 2019. from 8,400 liters to 2,400 liters. Similarly, expenses decreased from 49,000 lei to 15,000 lei. That is, a reduction of almost 70%. In other institutions that implemented similar measures, the reduction was approximately 40%,” the message also states.