Education.<\/strong> The Romanian government today plans to
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Protest.<\/strong> Two Romanian trade union federations have
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Pensions. <\/strong>The Senate has passed a bill on the reform
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Natural gas.<\/strong> EU energy ministers have decided to extend by another year
<\/p>\n
Football. <\/strong>The Romanian national football side defeated
A roundup of local and international news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":105208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-106563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\napprove the new education bills and submit them to Parliament. The
\npre-university education bill has three major goals: to reduce functional illiteracy,
\nenhance inclusion and fairness and reduce school drop-out rates, while taking
\non board the lessons taught by the pandemic and other crisis situations faced
\nby Romania in recent years. The bill on higher education aims to better anchor Romanian universities within
\ninternational communities, including by means of financially-supported mobility
\nand projects of collaboration between the academic and research sectors. The
\nnew bill seeks to achieve student-focused education, also by involving young
\npeople in the decision-making processes. <\/p>\n
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\ntoday staged a protest outside the government headquarters, unhappy with the
\nsalary scheme in this sector. They demand urgent solutions to enhance the
\nincomes of the auxiliary teaching staff and overtime pay for the teaching and
\nauxiliary staff. The federations also demand the application of the regulations
\non the payment of bonuses for working conditions, saying education employees
\nare the only category of public employees not to benefit from such bonuses.
\nSimilar protests were held last week around the country. Trade unions say they
\nare planning a protest rally in Bucharest in May and even warn of a general
\nstrike unless the government finds solutions to the problems of the employees
\nin the education sector. <\/p>\n
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\nof special pensions, with 79 MPs voting in favour and 37 against. After intense
\ndiscussions, the bill was approved on Tuesday by the specialist committees, who
\nonly accepted the amendments proposed by the parliamentary majority. One of the
\nchanges refers to an additional tax of 15% on the special pensions exceeding
\nthe gross average salary. Also, special pensions can no longer exceed the
\nincomes obtained before retirement, and beneficiaries cannot receive both a
\nsalary and a pension. The discussions were also attended by trade unions from
\nthe police and the army, who requested that the pensions in these sectors
\nshould not be subject to the law. Around 200,000 people currently benefit from
\nspecial pensions, of whom 170,000 are former defence and public order
\nemployees. Romania has 7 categories of special pensions, including those of
\nmagistrates, military and diplomats. Yearly budget expenses connected to the
\nspecial pensions amount to some 2.4 billion euros. Former magistrates have the highest pensions,
\neven amounting to some 3,600 euros a month, ten times more than the average
\nstate pension. Changing this pension system is a requirement laid down in the
\nNational Recovery and Resilience Plan and may lose Romania almost 3 billion
\neuros of EU funding. <\/p>\n
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\nthe recommendation to cut natural gas use by 15%. The measure was initially
\nproposed after the start of the war in Ukraine in an attempt to reduce
\ndependency on Russian gas. According to the Swedish presidency of the EU,
\nthanks to this recommendation, European gas use dropped by almost 20% from
\nAugust to January. The reduction in consumption also contributed to a drop in
\nprices, said the EU officials.<\/p>\n
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\nBelarus 2-1 on the National Arena on Tuesday evening, in Group I of the Euro
\n2024 qualifiers. Romania now have six points from two matches played, having
\nalso defeated Andorra 2-nil. (CM)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"