CAT/OP/ROU/1/Add.1 Government Ordinance No. 80/2001 on the establishment of expenditure norms for the public administration authorities and public institutions regulates the expenditure norms for the public administration authorities and the public institutions, regardless of the way of financing their activity. Point 4 of Annex No. 3 to Government Ordinance No. 80/2001 on the establishment of expenditure norms for the public administration authorities and the public institutions stipulates that the ministries and other specialized bodies of the central public administration with up to 400 positions can have 2 cars in the common car fleet. Based on par. (3) of Art. 1 of the normative legal act, expenditures that are subject to the Government Ordinance No. 80/2001, included in the budgets of the Presidential Administration, the Parliament, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the General Secretariat of the Government and the institutions in the field of defence of the country, public order and national security, shall be established through their own norms. Pursuant to the above provisions, the abovementioned entities shall incur protocol expenses on the basis of the administrative acts issued by the principal authorizing officer of each institution. The current legislative framework does not allow the People's Advocate, despite its rank as a fundamental institution with a role in defending citizens' rights and freedoms, to set their own norms for protocol expenses, travel abroad, car equipment and monthly fuel consumption within the annual budget approved, not being exempted from the application of Government Ordinance No. 80/2001. In this context, there were some institutions, including the Ministry of Justice, who considered that the provisions of Government Ordinance No. 80/2001 are not applicable to the People's Advocate Institution also in view of the provisions of Art. 39 of the Rules of Organization and Functioning of the People's Advocate Institution, republished, as amended, which stipulates that the norms of expenses for protocol, travel abroad, purchase of cars and monthly fuel consumption should be established by order of the People's Advocate, according to the law. Different interpretations of the legal rules by competent institutions create the premises of possible illegalities in the use of public funds. Thus, in order to comply with the legal provisions, legal steps were taken in order to endow the Mechanism for the prevention of torture in the places of detention with the necessary cars for carrying out the activity in appropriate conditions. To this end, in the year 2015, the Secretary General of the Government initiated a draft Decision on the regulation of the number of cars and the fuel consumption for the specific activities of the Field for the prevention of torture in the places of 54