Government passes laws confirming pension and wage cuts

Emil Boc-led government was due to adopt the two laws pertaining to the reduction of state expenditures and an emergency ordinance on tax evasion clampdown last evening, pledges related to the loan agreement signed with the IMF, and the Parliament was set today to decide on the calendar of the government’s steps to assume responsibility for the austerity plan. This is an unprecedented budgetary expense reduction plan in Romania of the last 20 years, as public sector wages and pensions have never been slashed by such high percentages, of 25% and 15%, respectively. Cuts will come into effect starting June 1st. The austerity plan will have to come with 200,000 redundancies in the public sector by yearend, President Traian Basescu has announced recently. To the wave of the bad news, public sector employees have responded with the first move at hand: trade unions are going to go on strike starting tomorrow as a sign of protest to austerity measures, threatening to paralyse Romania.