Red Tape, Bureaucracy and Objections

Creating an NGO can’t be too hard in Romania, can it? Well, the answer is no – IF you have the right people who know what they are doing to help you.

Bridging The Gap has been extremely lucky so far to have the support of many different companies in Bucharest. The first was the law firm of Vernon David Legal who generously agreed to assist in the creation of our charity. It’s no understatement to say that this service has been an absolute Godsend.

When we decided to start up the organisation back in October, we had hoped that by the time that the operations started in January with the team in place, we would be able to have the registration process well under way. Well, sadly this wasn’t the case as there is a ton of grassroots work that needs to be done first.

As lawyers, Vernon David knew the process backwards and were keen to get us started. On 17^th December, “Asociația Bridging The Gap” was born as our name was registered with the Ministry of Justice. Step one was complete.  

Bridging The Gap's name registration approval

Once this has been done, it’s time to put together your portfolio of documents to take to the Ministry of Justice for the registration process. For any of you who would like to read this in Romania, please see Ordnance nr. 26/2000 which can be found on the internet. These documents included the following:

• Information and ID of the founding members (of which there must be 3)
• The aims and objectives of the organisation which are included in the Statute (a 12 page document detailing exactly what you intend to do) and the Constitution (which is a shorter version of the Statute)
• A bank statement showing that each of the founders has invested patrimony in the organisation. This is 900 Romanian lei in total (around £180)
• Details of the Board of Directors (again 3 individuals)
• Information on how to join the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees
• Information on where the finances for the organisation will come from
• Information on where the office headquarters will be

This process has proven quite timely as we have come up against different obstacles. First of all, each founder has to either have a Romanian Social Security number or declare in front of a lawyer that they owe no money to the state. Other problems we have faced include having the relevant documents to open up a bank account as British citizens, deciding whether Bridging The Gap will be an association or foundation (there is a big difference which we’ll write about later) and finalising our aims and objectives.

So, ten weeks after arriving in Romania to start up Bridging The Gap, we finally went to the Court House last week to register as a legal entity. One of the firm’s junior lawyers, Florin Corneanu, was well versed and confident that it would be a quick process. In fact, he was right. While many of the other organisations were in front of the judge for a few minutes, we were in and out in under 25 seconds. The judge had no questions about our objectives, aims or goals and approved it immediately.

Florin, our lawyer

Although the process took us slightly longer than we had hoped, it was absolutely necessary to get these first steps right and Bridging The Gap is grateful to the team at Vernon David who have given so generously of their time and effort to help us out. Check out their website here if you are in need of any legal services in Bucharest or Chisinau. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

On a final note, there is still a two week window before Bridging The Gap becomes fully operational. Our intentions have been announced on the Ministry of Justice website and we have two wait two weeks in case someone wants to object to our registration. Kind of like at a wedding. I hope that this doesn’t happen.