National Liberal Party (PNL) vice president, Raluca Turcan, minister of Culture, said that the Government’s intention to intervene through an emergency ordinance on the increase in the pension tax threshold creates a „constitutional challenge” and might „make vulnerable” a very important measure.

Raluca Turcan recalled that this bill has been in Parliament since 2022, having been unanimously passed by the Senate.

„Increasing the pension tax threshold is a measure that comes in continuation of the recalculation reform of all pensions in Romania. This bill was submitted in 2022 (…) Because there has been a whole debate in the public space about what happens to pensions that are due to be paid, but at the time of indexation this indexation would be carried out at the level resulting from the recalculation. That’s why there was a whole concept – recalculation with the digitization of pension files and the measure to increase the tax ceiling on pensions, so that small pensions could benefit from indexation later on. Procedurally things are very clear. I do not understand why some people want to complicate them, because there is a bill in Parliament, passed unanimously in the Senate by all political parties. In a single day, through the vote in the two committees – budget, finance and labor and the vote in Parliament – the bill can be adopted by the Romanian Parliament. In addition, a constitutional challenge is created and we can make a very important measure vulnerable by the fact that the Government intervenes through an emergency ordinance, while in the Chamber of Decision there is a bill on the same subject,” Raluca Turcan told a press conference held at the Parliament.

She said the measure to increase the pension tax cap will impact 2.4 million beneficiaries, following the recalculation of entitlements.

„For me, as former Minister of Labor and initiator of this bill, the result matters. And I am glad that the result has been embraced by the government partners, whereas before a former PSD minister categorically rejected it with arguments that had no grounding in reality. It is good that they have reached this conclusion, because this was the measure that completed the pension reform. It is not an invented measure, it is not a populist measure, a measure to satisfy a momentary expectation of some people. For good reason, there are expectations of income growth, but the concept of reforming an essential macro-system in Romania, such as the pension one, was exactly this, coherent end-to-end,” said the PNL vice-president.

AGERPRES