Romanian labor minister looks at pension system "correction"

Romanian labor and social justice minister Lia Olguta Vasilescu said the Government will start looking into the pension system once they are through with the public sector wage law, Agerpresreported. The minister made the announcement in reference to the special pensions for several categories of state employees, which will be put on hold until the Government will take on the pension law project. The special pensions are granted, among others, to former prosecutors, judges, military personnel, auxiliary personnel in legal courts, or diplomatic personnel. Romanian MPs also receive special pensions, although the country’s Constitutional Court ruled twice that the law granting them special pensions is unconstitutional. Olguta Vasilescu said that the ministry she leads will start working on a draft law to reduce welfare benefits, and that the Government “will no longer throw money without measure at social benefits.” “We have frozen those [e.n. special] pensions until a very fair and serious approach of the pension law in general. After we are done with the pay law, we will start looking into the pension system, which needs to be corrected because we have this minimum compensation that reaches RON 520 (EUR 116) this year. We plan that, starting January 1, 2018, it goes up to RON 600 (EUR 134) because one cannot live in Romania with this minimum compensation. But, be aware, we are talking here about people who maybe never worked in their lives, they don’t have even on year of employment history. But we are now in a situation where, by increasing the minimum social compensation, they catch up with those who worked for 15 years. Which is not fair, and we want, just as we worked at the unified pay law, where we categorized everyone according to their employment history, training, education and so on, to do the same with the pension system,” Olguta Vasilescu said in a TV show at Antena 3. The Labor Minister also said no pension will be cut in Romania. “We will freeze all special pensions. Usually, those with special pensions receive 120% of their last month’s gross revenue. This means a salary of RON 2,000 (EUR 445), to which benefits of up to RON 1,000 (EUR 223) are added, and this is the minimum level. Some pensions reach up to RON 45,000 (EUR 10,000). Very many are over RON 20,000 (EUR 4,445). The special pensions are for now frozen until we will start looking into the pension system. […] We want to carefully correct the system because, if we keep it up with this chaos, some will be socially assisted and others will have pensions more than sufficient for Romania,” she said. At the same time, the minister announced that a special division to combat black market labor will be created. “We will be merciless here,” she said, quoted by