Consideration Regarding Community Services of the Romanian Public Utilities

Abstract

The community service of public utilities has known all through time various regulations and revisions that have been done according to the political, economic and administrative views of that period. In the 1866 Constitution, they were considered as public utilities, whereas Law 129/1938 labelled them as communal exploitation and the communist regime revised them as public households. The current legislation, written according to the European principles established them as community service of public utilities. The present politics and administration encourage a certain openness of market of public services, but the community services of public utilities still implies a certain degree of monopole. That is due to the fact that this type of services are offered through a local administration infrastructure and also to the fact that they serve the public interest, enclosing accessibility and capacity to be supported by all users. The aim of this paper is to present the evolution of the way the community services of public utilities have been organized and have been supplied to the people. The analysis is done taking into consideration the different legal laws that regulate this field but also the relation between suppliers and users that functions in a monopole market. The decisions and the evolution in this particular market are only dependent on the local public authorities and the protective political measures taken by the authorities. This paper aims to point out the directions to be followed in the future regarding the community services of public utilities, monopole or liberalization.