Deputy PM Barna: New pension law in the works to correlate retirement age with life expectancy

Deputy Prime Minister and USR PLUS Co-chairman Dan Barna said that a new pension law is in the works at the Labor Ministry, as the system requires certain changes in order to remain "sustainable" and cope with enhanced pressure as Romania's baby-boom generation born between the mid-60s and the early '70s is heading towards retirement age. "It is a firm commitment of the current coalition. We will set a new pension law in place that will keep the weight of the pension system in the budget construction," Barna said on Wednesday at the Palace of Parliament. Asked about leveling the retirement age and raising the contribution to the pension plan, Barna said: "These aspects are not defined in our governing program or in the National Resilience and Recovery Plan. We will have a new pension law." He explained that "life expectancy has increased everywhere" and that this legislative move is part of a European-wide policy. "Romania needs a new pension law precisely because here too, the demographic elements that were a reality 10 or 15 years ago have changed. (...) I didn't say that the retirement age will change. I said that, at the moment, we are talking about a new pension law that must somehow calibrate the system with life expectancy, that's a reality we are looking at. (...) This is a major subject, and I am convinced that every Romanian understands this. Since today we are in a position to keep retroactively adjusting pensions, (...) recalculating the pension point and this mechanism creates imbalances, we need a new approach to the entire system. With the baby-boom generations moving towards retirement age, the system cannot remain sustainable if we don't make these changes," Barna explained. AGERPRES (RO - author: Livia Popescu, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Simona Klodnischi, editor: Simona Iacob)