Radio România Internațional

Tag: recalculation

  • August 16, 2024 UPDATE

    August 16, 2024 UPDATE

    Gas – Romania currently has 2.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas stored in underground storages, which accounts for over 88% of the total storage capacity, given that, according to the European directives, the storages must be 85% full on September 1, the Energy Minister, Sebastian Burduja, announced on Friday. According to an Energy Ministry press release “daily, Romania produces approximately 25 million cubic meters of natural gas, consumes about half, and another 10 – 11 million cubic meters are stored”. Sebastian Burduja has also announced that Romania will continue to store natural gas until it reaches 100% of its storage capacity. According to him, the storage of natural gas for the winter season is all the more important since the neighboring Ukraine has announced that it will no longer extend the transit contract of Russian gas on its territory.

     

    Pensions – 4.6 million Romanian pensioners are to receive higher pensions by the end of the month. According to the Minister of Labour and Social Solidarity, Simona Bucura-Oprescu, over 80% of the pensioners are to benefit from recalculated pensions. Roughly two million are to get their pensions higher by 100 Euros. For more than one million the rises will range between 500 and 1,000 lei but 7,700 of them will see more than 3 thousand lei added to their initial pensions. Significant raises will see the people who worked over 40 years and didn’t benefit from the correction index of the past years. According to Minister Bucura-Oprescu, no pension cuts will be operated, and people will receive their recalculated pensions in September.

     

    Gymnastics – The Romanian gymnast Ana Maria Barbosu on Friday came into the possession of the bronze medal won in the floor final at the Olympic Games in Paris. The event took place in a ceremony organized on Friday on the esplanade of the Olympic House in Bucharest, following the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. We remind you that, on August 5, in the floor final, Ana Maria Bărbosu was awarded the bronze medal for a few tens of seconds, but the American Jordan Chiles filed an appeal and her score was increased, so she finished in third position. Later, Romania also filed an appeal, which was finally approved. “I am happy to be in the possession of this medal and I hope to continue representing Romania at the highest level and to bring it as many medals as possible”, said the athlete.

     

    Migrants – 32 migrants were discovered, on Friday, hidden in a truck driven by a Romanian at the border point at Nădlac II, in Arad county in western Romania. They come, according to the border police, from Iraq, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Afghanistan and intended to fraudulently cross the border with Hungary in order to reach Western Europe. The truck driver is being investigated for migrant trafficking, and the citizens discovered are being investigated for attempting to cross the border fraudulently. According to the waybill, the driver was transporting furniture on the Romania-Italy route.

     

    Navy Day – ‘Romania has been acknowledged and appreciated by its allies as a solid pillar of regional security and a major contributor to the process of strengthening NATO’s deterrence and defense posture on its eastern flank’ the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis said in Constanta, on the Romanian Black Sea Coast, where he participated in the events dedicated to Navy Day celebrated on Thursday. According to Iohannis, although we are living in times marked by multiple security challenges, in the context of the war Russia is waging on Ukraine, Romania is today a safe and stable country and its citizens are defended and protected against any potential threat. Thousands of tourists and citizens of Constanta gathered to watch the biggest naval show of the year, which involved the participation of over two thousand sailors and servicemen from Romania and the armed forces deployed here. The event was also attended by 15 military vessels, coast guard patrol boats, F-16 fighters, surveillance aircraft belonging to the USA and France, Puma Naval helicopters and paratroopers. (LS)

  • Government plans to recalculate pensions

    Government plans to recalculate pensions

    The tensions between the power and the opposition in Romania are far from over. The Liberal Labor Minister Raluca Turcan has announced that pensions will be recalculated and that the reevaluation of over 5 million files has started and it will take around one and a half years. After this stage is completed, a new law of the public pension system, based on contribution and equity can be drawn up. Minister Turcan explains: “We have a number of possible formulas to calculate pensions and we keep looking for the most equitable one, that can also be sustained by the pension system. I say this because one thing that has not been discussed, and which was unfair to 5 million pensioners, was that Law 127, which instated a new pension calculation formula, required a budget that no economy, similar to the Romanian economy, even before the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic, could have afforded.”



    A 40% raise in pensions as of September 2020 had been decided by the Social Democrats, who held majority in Parliament when the decision was taken. However, the Liberals, who were in power last fall, did not enforce the measure and issued an ordinance that only raised pensions by 14%. The initially planned 40% raise, proposed by the Social Democrats, would require 28 billion euros from the state budget.



    Romania did not afford to increase pensions last year and does not afford to do this at present either, Liberal PM Florin Citu said, invoking the poor economic context generated by the pandemic. The Government appealed at the Constitutional Court the Social Democrats’ law increasing pensions by 40%, but the Court rejected the appeal, and only partially admitted an objection of unconstitutionality, as regards the judicial uncertainty around the value of the pension point.



    The removal, by the Social Democratic MPs, who held majority in Parliament last year, of the ordinance issued by the former Liberal government headed by Ludovic Orban, of the articles stipulating a raise in pensions by only 14%, creates a legal gap, because a new value of the pension point has not been specified, with the MPs expecting the 40% increase to be enforced automatically. The Social Democrats, in the opposition, have rejected the stand of the Government, have asked for the increase in pensions stipulated by the law in force and insist that the current legislation must not be modified. The latest recalculation of pensions took place in Romania in 2005-2010, when around 1 million pension files were analyzed. (Translated by EE)