Censure motion/Viorica Dancila: Pension payment not postponed, but done earlier

Prime Minister Viorica Dancila on Thursday contradicted in the joint plenary session of Parliament a series of accusations in the censure motion text, underscoring that the pension payment was not postponed, but done earlier.

"You are making a serious mistake when you say we froze pensions starting 1 January 2019. May I remind you, in 2017 pensions increased two folds - once in January when they were indexed according to the legal provisions, the second time on 1 July, when the increase scheduled for the beginning of this year actually came earlier. The same in 2018 - we put in place earlier the increase that should have taken place in January 2019, and on 1 September we'll perform the increases scheduled for January 2020 three months earlier. Therefore, the pension payment wasn't postponed, but done earlier. And they haven't been frozen either, nor have they dropped, as you claim, but they increased more than provided by law, according to our governance programme. Each time increases were a lot higher over the inflation rate and by 50 percent of the increase in the gross average salary," the PM pointed out at the debates on the censure motion initiated by the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Save Romania Union (USR) and the People's Movement Party (PMP).

The PM also contradicted the fact that the new pension law wouldn't be fit for implementing.

Viorica Dancila mentioned that, according to the data with the National Institute of Statistics (INS), in the ten months of her mandate the purchasing power increased almost 8 percent and in this context the pension and salary increases "we eight points over the inflation rate." The PM also made reference to the fact that the motion authors maintain that there aren't any money for pensions and salaries, but also that for this reason the payment of the contributions for the education employees would have been postponed.

The PM reproached the censure motion authors that they are concerned with how much Romania borrows, pointing out that this topic is not in their favour. AGERPRES (RO - author: Irinela Visan, editor: Andreea Rotaru; EN - editor: Adina Panaitescu)