How does the Government explain the major change aimed at people with PFA who can manage state companies. The arguments offered by the initiators of the provision

The government quietly adopted, at the end of November, a provision according to which professional experience and the activity carried out as an Authorized Natural Person (PFA) are recognized among the selection criteria for candidates for management positions in state-owned companies. The General Secretariat of the Government (SGG) and the Agency for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Performance of Public Enterprises (AMEPIP), the initiators of the normative act, explained, at the request of HotNews, why they considered this change necessary. However, the answers of the two institutions are different.

• One of the institutions tries to make arguments in favor of the idea that “the experience of managing a PFA directly implies the full assumption of management responsibilities”, while the other believes that this does not “in itself equate to experience in the management of companies”.
• The provision was adopted in the midst of a scandal in which the managerial competence of ESZ Prahova and Apele Române is questioned, accused of having contributed to the situation in which tens of thousands of Prahova residents were left without water.

The experience gained by a person in the management of a PFA or a sole proprietorship / family business becomes equivalent, from the perspective of eligibility in the selection process, to the experience in running a company. This is what the Government's decision provides, in short, about which HotNews wrote, for the first time.

More precisely, according to the provision, experience as administrators or directors within a company “or the performance of economic activities by authorized natural persons, sole proprietorships or family enterprises” is required. In other words, individual entrepreneurship can be recognized as a form of managerial experience.

The mention was introduced in a Government decision (HG 1053/2025) approved on November 28.

What is PFA? The authorized natural person does not have legal personality, it does not have management bodies. The holder of the PFA is the PFA itself, being a form of organization of economic activity in which a natural person carries out activity on his own account.

The reason for introducing this eligibility criterion is not explained in the substantiation note of the provision. HotNews thus asked the two initiators of the provision – the General Secretariat of the Government (SGG) and the Agency for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Performance of Public Enterprises (AMEPIP) – how they argue.

SGG calls for 'transferable and scalable skills'

The General Secretariat of the Government explained, in a three-page response to HotNews, why it believes that an Authorized Natural Person can have enough experience to run a state-owned company.

According to the SGG, “the fact that a person's management experience was acquired within a PFA is not, in itself, an impediment to the exercise of large-scale management duties, as the relevant criterion is not the formal size of the managed entity, but the nature of the demonstrated managerial skills”.

“Leading a PFA directly implies the full assumption of management responsibilities – strategic planning, organization, coordination, control, management of financial resources, compliance with the legal framework and relations with third parties. These skills are transferable and scalable, being applicable regardless of the size of the organization”, the General Secretariat of the Government also states.

The provision “is intended to avoid the unjustified exclusion of competent candidates”

“Furthermore, the selection process is not based exclusively on the form of organization of the previous activity, but on the documented assessment of the relevant experience, the results achieved and the candidate's ability to coordinate complex structures, including through delegation, the use of specialized teams and governance mechanisms”, SGG claims.

According to the institution, “the acceptance of experience acquired within a PFA is to avoid the unjustified exclusion of competent candidates and to respect the principle of equal opportunities, without automatically assuming that any person with such experience is suitable for a leadership position at national level”.

“Competence is not determined by the legal form in which the experience was acquired”

In the opinion of the SGG, “the ability to manage a large state-owned company is verified by all the selection criteria, not by a single formal element of the career path”.

“The inclusion of experience gained through independent activities, including within the PFA, does not contravene the standards of good governance, as long as the experience is relevant, documented and evaluated in a comparable manner to that acquired in other forms of organization,” SGG representatives believe.

At the same time, the institution considers that “such a provision does not encourage incompetence at the level of state companies, as it does not confer an automatic right of access to management positions”.

“Competence is not determined by the legal form in which the experience was acquired, but by its quality, relevance and results, evaluated by objective criteria”, stated the General Secretariat of the Government.

The institution also conveys that “the a priori exclusion of experience acquired in the private environment or in independent forms could lead, paradoxically, to the limitation of the selection base and to the perpetuation of non-performing practices, by restricting access to management positions only to certain categories of professional career”.

“The objective of the normative act was, among other things, to bring administrators with experience in corporate governance and not people with experience in public administration”, SGG also transmitted.

AMEPIP says PFA experience does not “in and of itself equate to corporate management experience”

The super-agency of state companies – AMEPIP – says that the new provision “defines the notion of professional experience, and not experience in managing entities of comparable size or complexity to those of public enterprises”.

Thus, the carrying out of economic activities by authorized natural persons, individual enterprises or family enterprises is recognized by the normative act as a form of acquiring professional experience in the fields provided for by law, without this being equivalent, by itself, to the experience in managing companies or public enterprises.

“We believe that the selection of administrators organized by the Public Guardianship Authorities will be based, in addition to the legal basis cited above, on criteria based on professionalism, equal opportunities and competitiveness, as well as principles of good faith,” AMEPIP said.