Talks within the ruling coalition
Talks are under way in Bucharest on the reforms envisaged by the country’s ruling coalition.
Daniela Budu, 17.11.2025, 14:00
Intense negotiations took place last week within the governing coalition, ending with an announcement that an agreement was reached regarding the reduction of salary expenses in the local and central administration. Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan says a third package of fiscal-budgetary measures will be presented in the coming days. The bill will contain steps to cut staff and expenditure and will be adopted through a confidence vote in Parliament. The prime minister explained that staff cuts will be made gradually and the number of employees will be calculated according to a formula that takes into account the number of inhabitants. He added that the salary fund in the central administration will be reduced by some 10% and a transfer of competences will be made to the local public administration.
In another move, a meeting of the governing coalition will take place on Tuesday, to discuss magistrates’ pensions and the economic recovery package, two reforms that have been postponed in recent months. The matter of special pensions, which affects magistrates, has been the subject of negotiations in the last few days, but with no concrete results, even though President Nicuşor Dan invited the leaders of the governing coalition and the representatives of the judiciary to talks. According to political sources quoted by Radio Romania, the coalition has proposed a transition period for the application of the new retirement conditions amounting to 10 years or possibly more, and that pensions should amount to 70% of the last salary. The magistrates, however, want the transition period to be longer than 10 years and pensions to amount to 65% of the last gross salary. Ilie Bolojan said the government will go back on the first version of the bill on the reform of magistrates’ pensions after it was rejected by the Constitutional Court. Once finalised, the bill will be sent for approval to the Superior Council of Magistracy. The prime minister recently said in an interview that good faith and loyal collaboration will be seen from the time it will take the Council to respond to the request for an opinion. Unless it passes the reform by the end of the month, Romania faces losing 231 million euros as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Meanwhile, after more than a year of negotiations Romania last Thursday obtained the approval for a revised National Recovery and Resilience Plan, during a meeting of the Council for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN) in Brussels. The new plan has a total value of over 21.4 billion euros. Bucharest has already received half of this amount, with the rest to be received by the end of next year. The revision involved the elimination of investments that could no longer be carried through, the inclusion of new investments and the transition of some important projects from loans to grants. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan is built around six payment requests, three of which have already been submitted.
