The interim president of the Chamber of Deputies, Alfred Simonis, believes that, by the end of September, the law on special pensions will be adopted in its new form, with the changes requested by the Constitutional Court.
Chamber of Deputies meeting Photo: INQUAM Photos / Octav Ganea
Alfred Simonis was asked, on Saturday, on the Insider Politic show on Prima TV, what is happening with special pensions, considering the opposition of the Constitutional Court.
“The Court’s decision is not so vehement. Leave a gate. I think that by the end of September, we will adopt the law in its new form, with the changes requested by the Constitutional Court”, explained Alfred Simonis.
He was asked who are those targeted by this law. “All categories of special pensions in Romania, respecting decisions. Maybe someone will ask us why you don’t cut them off completely, like the parliamentarians. Where we could do it, because it is distinct law, we did. We cut the parliamentarians, magistrates and other categories. You can’t cut them anymore. Because there are some decisions that say they don’t have… And indeed, at the European level there is this concept, magistrates have special pensions all over the world”, said the interim president of the Chamber of Deputies, quoted by news.ro.
He specified that special pensions will be taxed. “15, 20, 25% as long as we set the maximum ceiling or the maximum ceiling will be set, it’s not even very important. (…) It has already passed the Constitutional Court. The court said that it is constitutional to tax. You can’t remove certain categories. It’s complicated for me to understand why you can’t remove. Because the fiscal policy of the state is made by the Government, it is made by the Parliament. Something we gave you through a normative act in Parliament can be withdrawn through a normative act in Parliament,” said Simonis.
The Constitutional Court published, on August 7, the reasoning of the decision by which it partially admitted the referral to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ÎCCJ) regarding special pensions and which is to be amended again by the Parliament in order for the normative act to be brought into agreement with CCR decision.
The CCR judges explain that the state has the freedom to modify or even eliminate an income granted as compensation, but that it cannot be a discriminatory measure, applied only to a professional category – as it is now in the case of magistrates, but must be applied to all professional categories, including the military.
However, the judges of the Court specify that no changes can be made to the spectrum of remodeling the defining elements of the right to pension already exercised, namely pension in payment, because this “affects its integrity and substance and casts doubt on the citizen’s trust in the state and in the activity of legislation”. In other words, the method of calculating the respective pension remains governed by the law under which it was obtained.
At the end of June, the parliament adopted a series of amendments regarding magistrates’ pensions, according to which prosecutors and judges can retire until 2028 under the same conditions as before, that is, regardless of age, if they have 25 years of service, and benefiting from a pension in the amount of 80% of the gross allowance and increments from the last month of activity. More precisely, the modification institutes a five-year grace period for special retirees.
The retirement age increases next year in stages, from 50 in 2024 to 60 in 2035.
It was also decided taxation with only 15% of special pensions higher than 4,000 lei net.
The reform of special pensions is a milestone in the PNRR.
Special pensions cost the Romanian state around 12 billion lei annually.
At the end of July, the number of service pensions was 10,310. Of these, more than half, i.e. 5,309, belonged to prosecutors and judges. The average pension in this case is 21,583 lei, according to public data.
The members of the diplomatic and consular corps, parliamentary civil servants, civil aeronautical navigation personnel, specialized auxiliary personnel of the courts and prosecutor’s offices and personnel of the Court of Accounts also benefit from service pensions.
In the category of special pensions, i.e. those received under special laws, military pensions are included in the public discourse. The latter represent the bulk, i.e. around 180,000. This includes the pensions of those who worked at MAi, MApN and SRI and are paid by their pension houses.
At the MAI level, there are 97,000 beneficiaries, which cost 5.2 billion lei annually.
At the MAPN level, there are around 78,000 beneficiaries, while around 5,700 come from SRI, SIE and STS. Last year, the cost of their pensions was around 4 billion lei.
2023-09-16 10:37:00
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