Romanian Parliament is going to re-discuss the 2019 state budget bill

Romanias 2010 state budget bill is back in Parliament

Corina Cristea, 11.03.2019, 13:20

Romania’s 2010
state budget bill is back in parliament because,
according to president Klaus Iohannis, the macroeconomic framework on which it
was based is devoid of the realism needed for a credible budgeting.

Romania’s 2019
state budget should have been passed and promulgated four months ago. However,
it is still circulating and at the core of major disputes between the Government
formed by the Social Democratic Party – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats
coalition on the one hand and the country’s president on the other.

The bill reached
parliament quite late, in February, and it was then sent by the president to
the Constitutional Court. Despite the latter’s ruling, according to which the
bill was constitutional, the president decided to send it back to Parliament,
describing it as a ‘budget of national shame’. The budget was built on a
fantasy scenario, with no guarantees for a proper implementation, a fact which
has been confirmed by European and international institutions, says Klaus
Iohannis, supported by the right wing opposition.

Presidential
advisor Cosmin Marinescu, which has presented the presidency’s arguments, has
stated that many other economies, partner to Romania’s, are already facing
slow-downs, and recent assessments conducted by agencies in the field show that
forecasts showing negative prospects are expected to follow. He has stressed
the fact that revenues are overestimated in the bill by some 2.1 billion Euros,
accounting for 1% of the GDP, which is quite a lot as to the estimated budget
deficit.

Also, budget
analyses have revealed underestimations of expenditures and even deliberate
negative adjustments, as it happens in the case of pensions. According to the presidential administration,
this is a budget that questions the observance of the international treaties
that Romania is a party to, as well as the legislation in the field, a budget
that was devised to cater to the political interests of a group.

According to the
Social Democratic Party, however, the 2019 budget was built carefully and
rigorously, and the head of state’s attitude is affecting the functioning of
all institutions. The Social – Democrats
say that the budget ensures all the necessary resources for all the major
sectors of the economy that the bill is a revolutionary one, aimed at
supporting health-care and education, and the president’s trying to delay it is
a matter of political bias.

Through the
Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies Florin Iordache, the Social Democrats
have already announced that they will submit the budget bill to Parliament for promulgation
in the same form as it was initially adopted by Parliament, namely based on an
economic growth rate of 5.5% and a GDP of some 200 billion Euros.