Adoption in Romania is to be easier in future, following parliament's adoption of a new law aimed at encouraging more adoptions in the country.

The goal is to slash the number of children kept in the country's scandal-ridden orphanages and close these institutions for good in the next ten years.

“We are hoping to double the number of adopted children in a year, as the new law allows them to leave the state protection system much earlier," Bogdan Panait, president of the Romanian Office for Adoptions, ORA, said.

"Children who have not been visited by their parents for a year will be declared automatically available for adoption. If no other relatives of the child can be identified within a month, he or she will be put up for adoption,” he explained.

“We support the new law as it will allow families to fulfill their dream of adopting a much desired kid much faster,” Simona Czudar, from “Ador Copiii” organization, said.

Another important change is that Romanian citizens living abroad will be able to adopt children from Romania and will no longer fall under the ban on international adoptions introduced in 2001.

The number of children held in Romanian orphanges has already fallen massively. Twenty years ago, more than 100,000 children were in state care homes.

But in recent years the numbers has crept up again, as parents go to work abroad and leave their children in care.

Today around 67,000 children are in state shelters, but only 1,900 of them were legally available for adoption before the new law came into force. The authorities are planning to take all the children out of orphanages and close them in the next decade.

Romania is currently under pressure to resume the international adoptions halted in 2001, but with more families in Romania wishing to adopt than there are children available, such a change looks unlikely.