Laws with a Social Impact

The Romanian MPs have passed a number of laws with a social impact, such as the fiscal amnesty for pensioners, mothers and state employees who received undue sums of money due to miscalculations made by civil servants

România Internațional, 10.09.2014, 12:40

The Romanian Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday passed a law on the fiscal amnesty of pensioners, mothers and state employees who received unjustified sums of money following miscalculations by civil servants. The new law will benefit almost 20 thousand mothers, 50 thousand pensioners and 25 thousand state employees. The laws will come into effect as of January 1st.

The MPs also adopted the law on reducing the social security contributions to be paid by employers by 5%, which had been initially rejected by the country’s president, who sent it back to parliament for re-examination. The Chamber of Deputies passed the law in its initial form. The President can still challenge the law at the Constitutional Court. The finance minister, Ioana Petrescu, has given assurances in Parliament that there are resources to compensate for the implementation of the law both for the end of 2014 and the year 2015. She explained that the money that will thus remain with the employers would be used for investment.

The finance minister has underlined that cutting the social security contributions will not affect the commitments made by Romania to foreign creditors and will not modify the targets agreed upon in terms of macroeconomic indicators. Although the opposition parties have initially labeled the laws as electoral gestures, they eventually voted the documents. Liberal MP Cristina Pocora:

“We understand that pensioners, mothers and other categories of state employees are not to blame for the mistakes made by civil servants, but we all have to be aware that the timing for the adoption of these bills has a lot to do with the upcoming elections”.