Ruling coalition blocks budget planning for Bucharest municipality

The employees of the Bucharest municipality, including those in public transport and municipal companies, will not be paid their wages this month in time after the ruling coalition formed by the Social Democrats and the Liberals, who hold the majority in the capital city's Council, blocked the budget planning for the year.

The City Council failed to endorse the 2024 budget documents for the third time on March 11, which is preventing the municipality from making expenditures, including the payment of wages out of the revenues generated this year. The municipality has in its accounts money left from last year, but not enough to pay in full the wages.

Răzvan Sebe, a member of Bucharest's City Council for the opposition party PMP, which is supporting mayor Nicusor Dan, accused the PNL and PSD councilors that, although they hold a comfortable majority to pass any amendment, they "hypocritically blame the general mayor," G4media.ro reported

He concluded that the representatives of the Liberal and Social Democrat parties "have already entered the election campaign and are blocking the budget for political and electoral campaign reasons, not for rational and ethical reasons. I think there is no problem to come up with amendments to this budget; I guarantee you that at least I support them", said Sebe.

(Photo: Andrei Stancu/ Dreamstime)