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Chamber of Deputies adopts special pensions law in the form coordinated with Constitutional Court decision
The plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies adopted, on Monday, the draft law on special pensions, which it agreed with the decision of the Constitutional Court.
174 deputies voted "in favour", 81 voted "against", and 17 abstained.
The draft law was adopted without substantive changes compared to the form adopted by the Senate last week. The Constitutional Court requested a series of amendments to the law only in connection with the service pensions of the magistrates.
The President of Save Romania Union (USR - opposition) , Catalin Drula, said on Monday that during the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies, when the special pensions bill was voted, he lived "another shameful moment of Romanian democracy - the maintenance of another 40 years of special pensions".
"We lived in plenary yet another shameful moment of Romanian democracy - PSD and PNL vote for the maintenance of special pensions for another 40 years. Practically through this vote the entire Romanian society that does not benefit from these privileges is defied. All the people who contribute or have contributed to the pension and receive a pension based on that contribution are today being spat in the head by Mr. Ciolacu who instituted a new constitutional principle: the principle of the privilege once granted remains forever granted. He misunderstood the reading of the Constitution which speaks of rights, not privileges", said Drula at the end of the plenary session.
According to him, special pensions are "a cancer that grinds the solidarity between Romanians".
"They are unreasonable pensions, like the 18,000 lei of the PNL president, the Senate president, Nicolae Ciuca, pensions that defy those who barely manage to live from day to day, pensions that are based on a completely different principle than the of the contribution granted, it is based, here, more recently, on non-permanent increases, on all possible tricks and we are told by this toxic coalition that is not able to even think about what will happen to the country in two or three years, that over 40 years will be eliminated," the USR deputy said.
He recalled that USR put the elimination of special pensions in PNRR, respectively the transition of all pensions to contribution.
The special pensions bill does not offer the expected solutions to social inequities, budget deficits and citizens' lack of trust, Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) MP Miklos Zoltan said on Monday.
"The bill that we are debating does not offer the expected solutions to social inequities, budget deficits and the citizens' lack of confidence. Thus, UDMR has considered for a long time the problem of the so-called special pensions to be an issue of social equity. And when we talk about pensions, we automatically talk about social equity and solidarity between generations, with contribution being the only acceptable criterion in determining the amount of this form of insurance for the elderly," Miklos told a plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies during a debate on the bill on special pensions.
According to him, "in this instance, it is about privileges and not about compensation."
"Compensation means balance; it means balance and equity, privilege means moral or legal abuse, for example the way in which the Justice sets for itself the pay and the differences to be recovered from the salaries in court. Given the circumstances, it is understandable why citizens end up losing confidence in justice."
The UDMR lawmaker went on to say that "the principle of contribution is ignored, and numerous categories of pensioners will continue to benefit from amounts far above the level to which they would be entitled as a result of their contribution to the social security budget."
The leader of the Force of the Right , Ludovic Orban, a non-affiliated MP and former liberal prime-minister, said on Monday that the Right's MPs have proposed to collect by the end of this year the number of signatures needed to revise the Constitution in order to introduce in the Basic Law the obligation to calculate the pension for all categories of employees only on the basis of the contributory principle.
Orban mentioned that the Force of the Right looks for partners to lodge the appeal to the CCR against the bill on the special pensions that was adopted on Monday by the Chamber of Deputies.