August 5, 2025
A roundup of local and world news
Newsroom, 05.08.2025, 13:55
BUDGET The ruling coalition in Bucharest is assessing the measures comprised by the second fiscal package aimed at reducing the country’s budget deficit with emphasis on the reform of the local public administration. Talks are also focusing on the reforms of state companies, fighting tax evasion and streamlining the activity of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration as well as the reform of the country’s healthcare system. Talks on reforming the magistrates’ special pensions are also underway as these reforms are expected to become part of the third set of fiscal-budgetary measures.
DECLIC The community Declic made up of over one million civically-involved Romanians from the country or abroad, has submitted to the Presidential Administration a petition signed by more than 85 thousand citizens calling on President Nicusor Dan to kick off a referendum on the issue of special pensions in Romania. In the aforementioned document, the community says that Romania needs a transparent system in which pensions must reflect the real contributions of the beneficiaries irrespective of their job or position. The signatories are asking for a solution to all special pensions not only for those of the magistrates. The Executive wants to commence the reform of the magistrates’ pensions, which is also a condition not to lose hundreds of millions of Euros in the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience, known as PNRR. Under a government proposal, the magistrates should retire at the age of 65 and their pension should be 70% of their last net salary. At present, the magistrates’ pensions are around 5 thousand Euros. The Executive’s proposals are being contested by judges and prosecutors.
GRECO Romania has implemented or properly approached only two out of the 26 recommendations comprised by the report of the second assessment round on preventing corruption and promoting integrity at central level (executive positions and leadership) and at the level of law-enforcement institutions. The conclusion belongs to the Groups of States against Corruption a.k.a GRECO, which is a Council of Europe body and which has today made public its conformity report regarding Romania endorsed during its 100th plenary sitting in Strasbourg over June 3 and 6. According to the document, out of the 24 pending recommendations, 22 have been partially implemented and two have not been implemented at all. The Group of States against Corruption is calling on the Romanian authorities to provide additional information regarding the implementation of the recommendations that are still pending by December 31 2026.
PROTEST Trade unionists in Romania’s Education on Tuesday staged a protest in Bucharest against the fical-budgetary measures endorsed by the Government. Teachers have asked for the resignation of field minister Daniel David and said that measures such as increasing the number of working hours and the number of students in a classroom as well as merging some education units are going to severely impact their activity. The unionists also want stipulations in the Austerity Law on education cancelled and have threatened to block the beginning of the school year unless their claims are met.
WEATHER The weather is still hot in southern and south-eastern Romania, where temperatures are expected to go up to 37 degrees Celsius and the temperature-humidity index THI will exceed 80 units. A code-yellow warning for extremely hot weather has been issued for the aforementioned regions. The weather remains warm in the other regions with showers and thunder storms expected only in the mountains. The highs of the day are ranging between 24 and 37 degrees.
(bill)
