Cristian Ghinea claims that the Minister of European Funds, Marcel Boloș, said a “donkey” about special pensions

It is about the statement of the current Minister of European Funds, who said that Romania cannot behave “like a wild country” regarding special pensions, because they exist throughout the European Union.

“This perverse attempt by Dîncu, Ciolacu, Budai, Boloş to pit Romanian society and categories of pensioners against each other is a donkey. Like a donkey, I say it very clearly, is this absolutely hallucinatory statement by Marcel Boloş who said, when asked “What are you doing with the special pensions, are you reforming them?!,” he said: “But we are not a wild country!” Do you know how much the pension is at the moment? A pensioner earns, on average, 1800 lei. I also made a calculation for teachers, a former teacher earns a pension of 2300 lei. Do you know how much the average pension for magistrates is? 21,000 lei! So 21,000 lei is the average pension, there are magistrates with 40,000 lei. Of these 21,000 lei, the magistrates contributed 4,100 lei. It’s a lot anyway. Attention, and we are talking about people who retire at 45. I now have a case of a physics teacher, he taught for 43 years, he has a pension of 2600 lei. So we are in a country where a magistrate who works until the age of 45 has 10 times more average pension than a teacher. This means a wild country, that’s why I say it’s incredibly rude for Marcel Boloş to come and say that “we are not a wild country”, if we want to change the laws, the special pensions“, said Cristian Ghinea on Prima Tv, according to News.ro.

Ghinea: SRI does not want to say what special pensions their former employees have

The former minister also spoke about the service pensions of other categories, showing that in the case of former diplomats this is on average 6,000 lei, for aviators the average pension is 11,000 lei, while for former SRI staff the pension is confidential.

In this context, Ghinea stated that the SRI officials gave a “circular” answer, according to which the former employees of the SRI “have their rights according to the law”, when they were asked by a parliamentarian what is the amount of the pension of the cadres who worked in this system.

“Now we are probably going to sue the SRI to tell us what the average pension of the former SRI is“, adds Ghinea.

Regarding the pensions of the military, Ghinea believes that they could be simply established by calculating, depending on the salary received while they were active, the contribution they would have had to pay if the law had provided for this, and on the basis of that contribution, the pension should be calculated.

Ghinea also says that he knows the case of a general who has a pension of 5,500 lei after he was part of the teams that prepared Romania’s accession to NATO.

“It is not an exaggerated pension for a man who had such responsibility”, says Ghinea, in this context.

Ghinea believes that the situation in which certain categories have such pensions indicates that Romania is a “country where we only value our power structures”, he points out that European statistics show that Romania is in 3rd place in the EU from the point of view of budgetary expenses for the force structures and in the last place in terms of the expenses for education.

Ghinea also states that Romania is also the EU state where “the most money from people’s pockets is spent”.

“This means a wild country, and this is what we struggled to reform and this is why there are certain issues in the PNRR that try to alleviate these problems that the European Commission has been telling Romania for 15 years”adds the former minister.

Ghinea revealed that “even in the former coalition there was resistance” and that some members of the PNL leadership were not “very keen” to reform the special pension system, he even gave the example of the current Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă, then Minister of Defense, who would said “it doesn’t apply to us”.

“And then, because we didn’t agree, we left it vague in the PNRR, I said the reform of special pensions is being carried out, the people from the Commission said to be more specific, and I said: Let’s not let the Government fail because of this. Now Boloş should bring all these ministers to the table and say: Lord, let’s agree. They are a kind of chief trade unionists. The one from Defense: it doesn’t apply to us, military pensions are wolf dogs! (…) Bode says: It doesn’t apply to me! Delivery: It does not apply to me! And Boloş, because it is his problem after all, he is the coordinating minister for PNRR, comes and says “we are not a wild country”. These people don’t have any consideration for pensioners, in fact, because otherwise they explain this difference”says the former minister.

Also, Ghinea ridicules Boloş, showing that he is “a kind of mouse, a technocrat, but he’s not exactly a technocrat, he’s a PNList, he loves Marcel Ciolacu very much, he doesn’t want to upset anyone” .

“These people are irresponsible because they keep postponing and throwing the cat from one to the other. PNRR is a great tool for both reforms and investments, which someone must take care of. When I was a minister, I was a coordinating minister for the creation of PNRR, I was a politician, that is, I played in the party I represented, USR, but I was an important person, and you criticize me, what is Ghinea doing from USR, I mean I was somebody. This means that I could go with Dan Barna and Dacian Cioloş at that moment to the coalition talks, to say: that’s it, let’s make a political decision! Marcel Boloş is a kind of mouse, a technocrat, but he’s not exactly a technocrat, he’s a PNL-ist, Marcel Ciolacu loves him very much, he doesn’t want to upset anyone… That’s not how you reform a country! You reform a country by having political power and setting some very clear political objectives there“, stated Cristian Ghinea.

Ghinea also stated that “money must come permanently from PNRR”, once the construction sites have started, because, otherwise, the works are either stopped or passed on to expenses from the national budget.

Minister Marcel Boloş stated that special pensions exist throughout the European Union and that they cannot be completely eliminated, as “a middle solution” is necessary.