The Governing Coalition has been struggling for about a year to implement a reform of the pension system in Romania and, above all, to abolish special pensions. The alternative is the loss of several billion euros in European funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Claudiu Năsui, the vice-president of USR, also spoke this week about the potential reforms that the Bucharest authorities are working on. In the opinion of the former minister, the draft law intended to solve the problem of pensions that are not based on contributions, in fact, will not facilitate the abolition of even a single pension. “It is a small beautification of the system”, insisted the USR-ist.
Why special pensions will not disappear
In Năsui’s opinion, at the moment, the Ciucă Government is struggling not to meet the milestone in the PNRR regarding special pensions. The Romanian governors think “that they can fool the European Commission into accepting”, but the European officials did not accept such a thing, according to the USR vice-president.
“Any gradual approach may mean that they just want to meet a milestone in the short term and ensure in the long term that they can extend deadlines, as they have done with the countless laws violated by the state annually by extending deadlines and so it should never happen, this is the main risk I see in this gradual approach,” insisted the former minister who collaborated directly in the realization of Romania’s PNRR.
“At least now it seems to me that Mr. Budai has understood that all service pensions are special pensions, all pensions that are given by special laws and paid by the state budget are special, so this is already a good thing. We are waiting to see the amendments because we understand from Mr. Budai’s press conference that there will be some amendments to the Government project, which is already on the circuit, we are waiting to see them, to understand exactly what they want to do with them, but everything goes in the direction of abolition USR supported and will support these special pensions (…). So it is a welcome thing.
I would raise an alarm, namely the fact that the gradualism that Mr. Budai was talking about, but we are waiting to see the amendments, to see exactly where that gradual transition happens, which can be used by a political class interested in maintaining these special pensions, for to temporarily fulfill the PNRR milestone, to say “Forget it, we passed the law”, after which to do something that is done extremely often in Romania, namely to extend the term, simply to say “We are extending the term from begins this gradual increase of the retirement age up to 65” or various things (…), said the USR vice-president in an interview for RFI
