The first Emergency Ordinances issued on March 21st, 2020, a few days after start date of state of emergency on March 16th, 2020, conditioned granting of commercial facilities (e.g., postponement of rent and utility payments or exemption from payment of contractual penalties) by an State of Emergency Certificate (SEC). Initially, the facilities in the field of social protection, such as reimbursement of employees’ indemnity placed in technical unemployment, were conditioned by such ESC, a measure which was later terminated.
Subsequently several laws that granted other types of facilities, for example in the banking field (e.g., suspension payment of installments) or fiscal (e.g., exemption from the payment of activity-specific tax) included the issuance of the Certificate as a condition for granting facilities.
It is expected that in the context of deepening the economic crisis and other benefits will have as a condition the possession of the Certificate.
These Certificates can be issued only during the state of emergency, and they have two (2) forms: type 1 (blue) and type 2 (yellow). According to publicly available information, after 1 month from the date on which the platform of the Ministry of Economy issuing the Certificates became operational a number of approx. 43,000 companies applied to obtain them, but a significant number of the Certificates issued were revoked. Therefore, in addition to fulfilling the legal conditions, it is important that the submission of the documentation is done correctly, in order to avoid the risk of revoking the Certificate.
