The National Trade Register Office has relocated its entire operations to Unirii Square in Bucharest, where officials began registering new businesses on Monday from a row of white marquees erected overnight. Staff said the move followed a fall of 8.94 per cent in company registrations during the first nine months of the year, a decline the office described as unacceptable for a country of its size.
Under the new rules, any citizen wishing to open a shop, a sole proprietorship or a limited company must stand in a queue that officials have measured at just over four kilometres, starting at the square and running down to the Dâmbovița embankment. Registrars walk the line with clipboards and sign applicants in as they pass, so that no trader can claim the office was closed to them.
Commerce, which the office says remains the hardest-hit sector, has been placed under a temporary rule that requires every retailer to sell at least one product in the queue itself. Shops in Constanța and Iași have been ordered to send representatives with a crate of goods each. Officials in Cluj have asked to adopt the same arrangement by next week.
In a statement read out at the square, the office's director said: «We have concluded that businesses do not register because the forms are at the other end of town. We have brought the forms to the people, and the people will stand where we can see them.» The queue is expected to remain in place until the figures recover.