PNL's Orban: We don't make reforms because EC requests them, but because they're necessary

The reforms that the Citu Cabinet is making are necessary and in accordance with the governing program, the chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Ludovic Orban, said on Tuesday, after the PNL's leadership meeting.

"There is a lot of information in the media which is not in accordance with reality, a lot of it. The reforms made by the Government led by PM Florin Citu are the reforms which are set out in the governing program. We do not make reforms because the European Commission requests them. We make reforms because they are necessary for Romania and we have set these reforms in the ruling program - "Educated Romania", the reform of public pensions, the reform in the area of public salaries, Justice reform, the repairing of all damages brought upon by the previous legislation to the Justice system. All these reforms we make because we need these reforms for Romania. Among the elements which are sought out in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (PNRR) by the European Commission there is also the reform part, those are the rules based on which each country presents a PNRR which also contains some reforms that are accomplished once along with the PNRR implementation," Orban explained.

He specified that the governing program states the same ratio in the GDP of spending for public staff wages.

"This does not mean freezing salaries. This means that, if you maintain the same envelope, the same percentage of the GDP for any economic growth, the salaries in the public sector will grow accordingly with the economic growth," the PNL leader said.

Orban rejected the information regarding an increase of retirement age.

"It is not true that we want to increase the retirement age. There is a draft which allows those able to work even after retiring, to not go through the humiliating process, year after year, to ask the company's manager to allow them to work after retirement, but assign that right to able-bodied people who want to keep working even after the retirement age, but we will not increase the mandatory retirement age", he said.

According to him, recalculating pensions is part of this system's reform.

"There must be a predictable mechanism which will take into account the objective economic indicators which are at the basis of increasing of the pension point, and recalculating pensions is part of the reform, because the objective of recalculating pensions is to eliminate the inequities within the system", Ludovic Orban said.