The level of trust in Mihai Tudose, the Prime Minister of Romania, and Liviu Dragnea, the president of the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) has dropped considerably in one month, amid some controversial justice and fiscal changes promoted or adopted by the Government.

The level of trust in Prime Minister Mihai Tudose dropped from 23.2% to 18% in one month, according to an IMAS survey quoted by local Adevarul. Meanwhile, even fewer Romanians have confidence in Liviu Dragnea, in his case the figure dropping from 18.7% to only 15%.

Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, the president of PSD’s junior partner in the ruling coalition ALDE (the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe), does better than Liviu Dragnea, reaching a level of confidence of 23% in October. Meanwhile, the level of trust in President Klaus Iohannis went slightly down from 41.7% to 39.7%.

However, PSD continues to lead the opinion poll, as 39% of respondents said they would vote for this party. However, the figure is lower than December last year, when PSD won the parliamentary elections with a categorical score of 46%.

Meanwhile, the liberals continue to go down in the polls, losing nearly 2 percentage points in one month. The recent IMAS study, which was carried out on some 1,000 respondents, shows that the Liberal National Party (PNL) would get 29.3% of votes, down from 30.9%. On the other hand, ALDE continues to be on an upward trend, the figures in its case going up from 8.1% to 10.2%.

The Government has been highly criticized in the last period, mainly due to the fiscal measures it adopted earlier this week. One of the most controversial measures refers to transferring the social contributions from the employers to the employees. Thus, the number of social contributions will drop from 9 to 3, their total value will be cut from 39.25% to 37.25% of the gross wage, and the most part, namely 35%, will be paid by the employees. Meanwhile, employers will pay a 2.25% labor insurance contribution. The Government says these measures should not have any impact on the employees’ net wages or the companies’ overall personnel costs. However, in order for net salaries to remain at the current levels, employers need to increase gross salaries by almost 20%.

Meanwhile, the MPs are currently discussing a project aimed at amending the justice laws. Big protests were organized in Romania last Sunday against these changes, as people beleive that some of them may limit justice independence and impact the fight against corruption.

Romania’s ruling party is going down in the polls amid internal crises

Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com