Companies asking for de minimis aid can submit their applications online, the Ministry of Public Finance recently decided, in its revision of the Guide for the Government Decision which promotes a new de minimis scheme for small and medium enterprises.
Thus, the procedure for the online registration of the requests for the approval of the financing was introduced as a premiere in the Guide, after voices in the business sector considered that the de minimis scheme was discriminatory to certain companies.
After the initiative was approved by the Government, consultants in the field have estimated that the manner in which this aid scheme has been implemented violates the principle of equal opportunity, because the initial version of the law required the applicants to physically submit their documentation at the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Finance (MFP) in Bucharest.
The first session for filing the necessary documents will take place between August 16th - October 31st, 2013, within the limit of the annual allocated budget. Immediately after the amounts have been exhausted, no more applications will be accepted by the system. The maximum budget for the de minimis aid scheme is over 400 million Euros, in other words less than 100 million Euros.
Consultants and potential beneficiaries are still skeptical that this scheme will be performed correctly for all those interested in the state aid, doubting the fairness in its execution.
"How will this application be used? Will the software be designed to show the hour of the login or will it allow the entry of dates before they start working? Will the entire budget be depleted in five minutes?", are a few of the questions that the quoted persons are asking themselves: "We expect that the money will be depleted in five minutes after 9:00 hours. That is what happened in 2010, when the POSCCE