During a press conference held on Tuesday, July 29, Romanian prime minister Ilie Bolojan presented the main measures from the magistrates’ pension reform project, which will be included in the third fiscal package. The project includes raising the retirement age and capping pensions.<\/p>\n
The reform is urgent and necessary, said the official, who also warned that Romania risks losing over EUR 800 million from the National Recovery and Resilience facility if the modifications are not done. The grants and loans guaranteed by the European Commission hinge on a series of reforms that Romania has to complete.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among the essential changes in the proposal are raising the retirement age for magistrates to 65 years, increasing the minimum length of service to 35 years, and capping the pension to no more than 70% of the net salary, compared to the current formula, which allows pensions to go higher than active income.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bolojan explained that current public system salary laws are unclear, allow interpretations, and have generated numerous lawsuits in court. \u201cThis has led to us having over 20,000 legal actions initiated by people working in the justice system, regarding social discrimination, the granting of bonuses, unsuitable working conditions, or administrative acts validated by court rulings,\u201d said the prime minister.<\/p>\n
According to him, the financial effects of these lawsuits were enormous for the Romanian state, amounting to RON 10 billion (EUR 2 billion). \u201cI understand there is still a stock of rulings, which means other billions of lei, significant sums of money for the Romanian state, which cannot be budgeted from one year to the next,\u201d said Ilie Bolojan. In this context, the PM emphasized the need for a salary law that eliminates ambiguities.\u00a0<\/p>\n