RO Govt. to “terminate” only a small fraction of so-called “special pensions”

Romania’s ruling Liberal Party (PNL) decided to “terminate” the so-called “special pensions”, namely those pensions granted on other grounds than personal contributions to the social security system, deputy prime minister Raluca Turcan announced after a party leadership meeting on December 9, Hotnews.ro reported.

The special pensions, paid from the central government (state) budget, amount to EUR 9 billion (over 4% of GDP) per year, Turcan stated quoted by Bursa daily.

She did not elaborate on the legal aspects of the “termination”, or the savings generated by the pensions thus “terminated”.

However, she announced that there will be some exceptions: the special pensions paid to the “military” (including those retired from the ministry of interior or intelligence services) and magistrates, namely the vast majority of the special pensions, will remain in place.

PNL explained the exception related to magistrates, quoting a decision of the Constitutional Court. In June 2019, there were 187,480 recipients of special pensions out of which 178,168 “military”. Out of the 9,312 non-military pensions, 3,800 were retired prosecutors or judges.

The opposition Social Democratic Party is promoting in Parliament a bill by which all special pensions would be subject to progressive taxation that would go up to 90%.

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