The Minister of Transport, the social democrat Sorin Grindeanu, said that he personally agrees with the tax on the turnover of transnational corporations and that as a “leftist” he agrees with the luxury tax. The minister explained that if Romania misses the deficit target, it will pay a fine of 0.5% of GDP, and this will affect major infrastructure works.

“At this point you have to make certain decisions. why Because if we continue as we are, we will not write into the target deficit. If we do not meet the deficit target, European funds are suspended and we pay a fine of 0.5 percent of GDP. I, as Minister of Transport, must know that I cannot afford to go through a period when European funds are suspended. In Romania, at the moment, there is not a single transport project, a large project, that is not financed by European funds. That would mean that everything stops. I cannot support this. Then certain decisions must be made,” Sorin Grindeanu said on Tuesday, News.ro reported.

The Minister of Transport also emphasized that he personally supports the taxation of multinational companies.

“Every time the Minister of Finance, whoever he is, comes and says: if we have this decision, we have such a budgetary influence, and this decision will be made in the coalition. I don’t know how to tell you the last things. Clearly, we cannot continue like this because we will not meet the deficit target. I fully support taxing the turnover of multinational companies, but that’s just my opinion. I support taxation and increasing the tax on the transfer of income abroad. I do not know whether it should be calculated unless we do well to apply what the Italians did about two weeks ago, namely, the tax on the profits of the banks. I said it had to be seen. Of course, Mr. Iserescu will come out and tell us that this is bad, but I say that we should look more carefully,” Grindianu added.

When asked if he also supports a luxury tax, Grindianu explained that he also agrees with this tax.

“This is a kind of luxury tax, a luxury tax. As a leftist, I certainly agree with this. Don’t let someone who owns a house worth more than €500,000 say that if you tax him at 0.5% he is poor, that he is not poor. And he has a car worth 75 thousand euros. He is not poor,” said Sorin to Grindean.