Deputy Stelian Ion received a fine of 1,000 lei for the protest that took place on Tuesday in front of the Ministry of Health. Parliamentarians and USR members marched to the institution’s headquarters on Tuesday to demand the resignation of Minister Alexandru Rafila after cutting €740 million from the PNRR for new hospitals and institutions.

“These people believe that with the help of convictions and fines they will be able to stop us, tell the truth and protest. He will not succeed! Some absolutely decent, peaceful demonstrations, with the help of which we only express our dissatisfaction with how these people mock our health and our money, are penalized in an offensive way. They believe that such protocols and fines will stop people. I think they got their calculations wrong, and I think the opposite will happen: people will be more and more dissatisfied with this insulting, discretionary and contemptuous attitude towards the fate of all of us,” explained Stelian Ion via the USR press release, quoted by news.ro. The former Minister of Justice said that he will appeal the fine.

USR parliamentarians have submitted a request to the Permanent Bureau of the Chamber of Deputies for Health Minister Alexandru Rafila to come to parliament and explain the €740 million cut from the PNRR to new hospitals and institutions. Parliamentarians and members of the UDR also went to the Ministry of Health on Tuesday to demand the resignation of Alexander Rafila.

“It’s time to part with Minister Rafila. The final straw was when he came and calmly announced to us that he had lost about €700 million in PNRR funds that were supposed to be used to build six hospitals across the country. Constanta, the district I represent in the parliament, is among the affected districts. We are all dissatisfied with the incompetence of this minister, with the fact that he has shamelessly lied to us since he was sworn in,” said Stelian Ion, UDR MP and former Minister of Justice, according to the party’s press release.

The Minister of Health, Alexandrou Rafila, explained on Monday that the PNRR adjustment reduced the non-refundable funds in the health sector by 740 million euros, and added that it is undesirable for our country to be in a situation where it pays out of budget amounts for some projects, which could not meet the completion deadline.

The Minister of PSD also noted that these projects will be implemented at the expense of loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB), returnable funds, that is, they will be returned from the budget. He also noted that because of this aid, it was necessary to review the investment in the hospital’s infrastructure, and thus six investment projects were affected.