Barna: Elimination of lawmakers' special pensions on agenda of Joint Standing Bureaus on Tuesday

The abolition of the lawmakers' special pensions will be on the agenda of the Joint Standing Bureaus of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday, most likely to enter the plenary session on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Barna announced. He specified that the topic of special pensions was one of the topics of discussion in Monday's meeting of the governmental coalition, which was attended by Prime Minister Florin Citu and several ministers. "We discussed an important issue, both for USR PLUS [Save Romania Union - Party of Liberty, Unity and Solidarity] and for the entire coalition, the one related to special pensions and, in the short term, the topic of the lawmakers' special pensions. This topic will be on the agenda of the Standing Bureau meeting tomorrow morning, so that on Wednesday, when there is a joint plenary session, I hope to have on the agenda the regulation on deputies and senators, so that we can take a vote, to see if we succeed on Wednesday, to abolish the lawmakers' special pensions, a necessary first step, a first step promised, a first moral obligation that we have assumed and that we will fulfill without a doubt," said the co-chair of USR PLUS at the Palace of Parliament. According to him, solving the entire problem of the special pensions is a priority, but each category must be analyzed separately. "I want us to leave behind this logic of rhetorical hypocrisy, that we see in various media outlets related to special pensions. Each category of pensions, called special in a generic way, must have a separate regulation and law precisely to avoid the constitutionality issues that we had in the previous legislature. Indeed, my colleague, Deputy Prime Minister Kelemen Hunor, has expressed some reservations about this approach, but what he is saying is let's take the steps that we can take. The lawmakers' special pensions are a natural, logical step. As for the other categories we have a working group through which we are looking at what a legally sustainable and functional approach is, so that we can make decisions to resolve this situation, whether resolution means taxing, in some situations, where the CCR [Constitutional Court of Romania] said that there cannot be an abolition mechanism, or abolition in other situations," Barna detailed. According to the deputy prime minister, each category will be analyzed, and the Ministry of Labor will come up with proposals. The deadline, in principle, is two months, in which to formulate options, variants for each category of special pensions. He also informed that the meetings of the governmental coalition will take place every Monday, from 11:00 hrs. AGERPRES (ro - author: Catalina Matei, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Simona Klodnischi)