Methodology

OFFICIAL SOURCES

cdep.ro — list of MPs, committees, declarations, legislative initiatives
senat.ro — list of senators, declarations, initiatives
ani.gov.ro — historical declarations reference
monitoruloficial.ro — confirmation of law publication

All data is auto-scraped. No number is entered manually. Parsing errors come from PDF OCR — if you see something odd, compare to the original PDF (link "DOCUMENT OFICIAL" on each profile).

WEALTH DECLARATIONS

Every figure is auto-extracted from the official PDF. Parsed fields:

Real estate — land plots and buildings, with surface area in m²
Bank accounts — count + total per currency
Stocks / shareholdings — number of positions
Debts — total per currency, with creditor (when parsable)
Income — totals per category (salaries, rents, pensions, other)

Currency conversion: for "≈ EUR" totals we use approximate rates (RON 1, EUR 5, USD 4.6, GBP 5.8). These are estimates. Original-currency amounts are always preserved.

Limitations: scanned PDFs (image-only) may parse incompletely. Approximately 5–8% of older declarations (1990–2008) have parsing issues — fields show "—" when missing.

CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST DETECTOR

For each MP we cross-reference declared interests (shareholdings, board seats, professional associations, public contracts) against the bills they personally initiated.

Each declared entity is mapped to a sector (15 categories: construction, agriculture, energy, pharma, transport, finance, media, telecom, education, etc.)
Each bill title is scanned for sector keywords
If both reference the same sector → the bill is flagged as a potential conflict
Severity: HIGH if ≥2 keywords match, MED if 1

These are signals to investigate, NOT conclusions. The actual conflict depends on whether the bill favors or harms the sector — read the law text.

ROI SCORING

We compare the public cost of a parliamentary seat (~€266k per 4-year term, gross to taxpayer) against observable activity:

+1 point per bill initiated
+20 points per bill that became law
+10 points per committee membership
+30 points per committee leadership role
+5 points per friendship-group leadership
×0.5 multiplier if wealth grew >50% across mandates
0 (phantom) if 0 bills + 0 committees

ROI is an effort-to-cost ratio, not a measure of moral worth or popular support. Real-world impact depends on what laws you initiate (a symbolic "Year of X" law counts the same as major reform). Treat it as one input among many.

UPDATE FREQUENCY

MP list + committees: weekly
Legislative initiatives: weekly
Wealth/interest declarations: on each ANI publication (monthly)

FOUND AN ERROR?

Compare the value on 281.ro with the official PDF
If the PDF differs → the author of the declaration is responsible
If the PDF is correct but 281.ro is wrong → it's a parsing bug on our side
Open an issue on GitHub with PDF link + page URL

LICENSE

All 281.ro data is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. Use it freely, commercially or not, provided you cite the source: "281.ro · Romanian Parliament Open Registry".