PSD leader Marcel Cholaku says he is disappointed by the corruption case rocking the party and says he will tighten the party’s integrity criteria to make the “Buzatu case” one of the last corruption cases in his party.

“Since I became the head of the party, I have not had such cases. I hope it will be one of the last… No one who has problems with a criminal offense will run for PSD,” Çolaku said in an interview on Antena 3.

He proposes that no person should remain in an administrative position for more than two terms:

“Constitutionally, this cannot be done, but through the party… You are moving away from reality. He was no longer in the real world,” he says.

A hole in the state budget

The prime minister blames the hole in the budget on Florin Sitsu and the former government, saying that it is not known where the money went, given the complex context of the pandemic.

“We are the only European state that has an agreement on excessive deficit in the European Union. Only Romania. We are the only country that had a government that brought Romania’s deficit to 9.2% and the national debt from 37% to over 50%. For a year and a few months, we owed 200 billion lei. This did not happen anywhere,” said Marcel Cholaku on Antena 3 on Monday.

When asked who made these decisions, the prime minister replied: “We all know, from my point of view, the political randomness of Romania, to become prime minister and do something like this, you can only rise to the level of the randomness of history.” . . He declined to name his predecessor, who made the decisions that caused the national debt to grow.

“Currently, no one knows exactly where these sums of almost 200 billion went, because it was a pandemic, then there was no levy anymore, we contracted a billion euros for vaccines, we have been vaccinating with these vaccines for about a hundred years, the only problem is that these vaccines are running out, all kinds of spending without any macroeconomic vision. We borrowed, we didn’t save and we hid some money that we thought would come back someday. The money was not returned. While all the countries of the European Union were returning to the economy to prevent the collapse of consumption and the local economy, we returned almost 2% of GDP, while Germany, France and Italy returned to the economy between 8 and 10% of GDP. In other words, all the decisions were wrong,” said Cholaku.

He noted that for the first time in the first quarter of this year, Romania recorded economic growth based on investments.

Unique VAT

Asked if the European Commission had asked him to raise VAT significantly, Çolaku said there had been reports from some European institutions suggesting that, but said he had “clearly communicated” to the EC president that he would keep VAT at single digits in order to the purchasing power of Romanians did not fall.

The Prime Minister insists he is not raising any tax, but is only “removing exemptions” to ensure “fair taxation”. “No ordinary Romanian will be hurt,” Colacu assures.

“We have a caustic budget system”

The head of the government also says that he will accelerate the reduction and reorganization of the budget apparatus, although the data so far contradicts him. The burden will be on each minister to come up with a clear decentralization project. “We have a Caussian budget system, and we have to follow the path of modernization,” says Cholaku.

About the single quota

The Prime Minister claims that there is no longer a single tax rate in Romania, and it is outdated, this system has been preserved only by our country and Russia.

The PSD leader advocates the entry into force of some progressive tax rates from 2025.

• the text is updated