The Ministry of Development is analyzing a method so that at the end of the day we will have a 10% real reduction in administrative personnel expenses, and regarding special pensions, if there are no more procedural errors and the Constitutional Court does not accept the measures, a referendum will be organized, announced the Minister of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, Radu Miruta, on Wednesday.
„There was a Coalition meeting yesterday (Tuesday, editor’s note) where things started to move forward. I’ll tell you the position that USR has regarding the final result, it also depends on the other Coalition partners: for us it is unacceptable, extraordinarily clear and firm, for special pensions to continue in the form in which they exist today; for us it is unacceptable to pretend that we are reducing state spending in local administration, cutting positions for which salaries are not paid, that is, those positions that are only in the organizational chart, but have not associated a person who comes to work. It is an insult to the citizens to whom we told them that we are forming a common front and asking for their support to initially increase taxes, so that we have time to solve the increase in debt collection that the Romanian state must collect and the reduction of spending, without doing this. This is not done with „Fraudulent lies about reducing the number of employees in city halls with employees who don’t exist,” Miruta explained in a press conference.
He emphasized that there is a decision made, namely a 10% reduction in expenses, and that the situation is not identical everywhere, because some city halls and county councils have outsourced certain activities, others have not.
„You can’t draw a one-size-fits-all line, as long as some are already doing this with service providers. But the Ministry of Development is analyzing a method so that at the end of the day we have a real 10% reduction, not in the organizational chart,” the Minister of Economy specified.
Regarding special pensions, he stated that in Romania there are not two categories of taxpayers, „some who pay so that others can collect something they don’t pay for.”
„On special pensions, I told you what the USR position is. I saw from the statements of the other Coalition partners that they also want it. We need to see how quickly there is availability, so that this desire is transferred into practice. (…) The Constitutional Court can do it 10 times, 100 times, as long as it says that there is no more error in the procedure, at that moment, when there is no more error in the procedure and despite all this they will not accept, we will go ahead with what we announced: the launch of a referendum, through which the Romanian people can tell the magistrates that it is not a right that they received at baptism, for which they must receive for the rest of their lives a pension that is higher than their salary and collected from 47 years and eight months. „It’s not right. I know it hurts. I see that there is a lot of irritation among some, who consider that when you talk about special pensions, you are hitting mines, hitting factories and plants, you are talking directly about them. No, you are talking about a principle when you take from someone who enjoys such privileges. I understand that it is a nuisance. But there are not two categories of taxpayers in Romania, some who pay so that others can collect something from which they do not pay,” Radu Miruta pointed out.AGERPRES
