Deputy Prime Minister Sorin Grindianu says that special pensions must be regulated so that the pension is not higher than the salary, and the retirement age of 40 has been abolished, with some exceptions. According to him, a delegation of the European Commission is currently in the government, which will also discuss the topic of special pensions, a milestone that Romania has taken on in the PNRR.

• “Currently, there is a law that canceled the special pensions of deputies, before the current ones, which the former won in court. I support and have supported the fact that anomalies in special pensions should be eliminated.
• It is not normal for the pension to be more than the salary when you were working. These anomalies definitely need to be eliminated.
• We need to take a closer look at these 40-year pensions. I agree, if they were on the battlefield, in the war, in Afghanistan, I think there were special situations, but even there it does not seem normal for the pension to be higher than the salary when you were working,” Grindyanu said in an interview for Digi24.

According to him, the recommendations of the World Bank will be carefully analyzed, taking into account that the abolition of special pensions is an important milestone undertaken by Romania in the PNRR.

Grindianu argues that it is normal to have a special regime for certain categories of retirees, but anomalies must be eliminated:

• “It is normal that there is a special regime for several categories, the police, the military, even some judges, but it is not normal for these differences to exist. (…)
• There were cases when they went to the magistracy for a month only to receive that pension, and after a month they returned to the bar. Come on seriously, isn’t this an unregulated issue? I wish there was a contribution question at the end, but I can accept that there is a specific area, but not a very broad one.’

A wave of judicial resignations

The renewal of discussions on the abolition of special pensions has led to an unprecedented situation in the judicial system: at its last meeting, last Thursday, the section for judges of the High Council of Magistracy (VCM) approved the resignation of 60 magistrates.

CSM Judge Andrea Kish, who will retire on January 7, 2023 at the end of her term as a CSM member, told the Council meeting that for magistrates the 2017-2018 street protests were a breath of fresh air, but the confidence people had in the court was undermined by the issue special pension is a “poisoned pill”.

• “It was a breath of fresh air that the country’s population supported us on the streets in 2017-2018. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, because the poison pill is our incomes and pensions, which are higher than the average person, because the work we do is also difficult and comes with a lot of responsibility.. It was enough for us to stop feeling respect , to feel the conflict even more acutely not only in the courtroom, but also in general as a society we serve.
• What is becoming more and more difficult for me and most likely for my colleagues is the instability of the status, the unpredictability of the adoption of normative acts that affect our status, against the background of the inflamation of society. That’s the reason I decided the moment I filed my resignation,” Judge Kish said at the CSM hearing.

She said she wanted to retire at the end of November, but did so now because she no longer knew how to respond to “the uncertainty thrown out into the public space” and because she wanted to raise “a wake-up call with others.” . colleagues to bring other forces back to the table of dialogue and to our models of good practice, transparency and predictability.”

In addition, the World Bank has finalized proposals for the reform of special pensions in Romania, an important milestone in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) to be adopted by the end of this year. In a document obtained by Economedia, the institution recommends that current special pensions be calculated on a contributory basis, that no new categories of special pensions appear, and that the current ones be “rationalized” because the incomes based on which pensions are calculated as the average of the incomes received for a longer period of time, and that no special pension should exceed earnings for a period of activity.

For judges and prosecutors, the World Bank recommends reviewing the right to retire at any age with 25 or more years of professional activity. It is necessary to gradually increase the 25-year service to 30 years and introduce a minimum retirement age. This age should be gradually increased to 60-65 years.