USR's Barna calls special pensions of lawmaker undue benefits, defiance

National chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR) Dan Barna says the bill under which special state pensions will be taxed 85% of the amount in excess of 7,000 lei solves part of the injustice, but the adoption of a proposal on the abolition of special pensions of lawmakers is also necessary.

"Today, part of the injustice has finally been solved. Parliament has decided that special state pensions will be taxed. Tomorrow, the same Parliament has the next step on the agenda - full repeal of special pensions for the lawmakers. The proposal belongs to USR. Special pensions of the lawmakers need to be abolished by a separate law in order for the law to be constitutional. Any Romanian lawmaker who wants to look his electorate in the eye has to admit that a special pension is an undue benefit. A defiance," USR leader wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

On the other hand, he reproached Parliament for having added over years increasingly more privileged categories to the list of beneficiaries of special pensions.

"The louder the Romanians would shout that special pensions are not fair, the more the parties pretended not to hear them. Then, after USR entered Parliament and put a mirror in front of the old parties, a switch was made to another strategy - endless procrastination. Although last week we were asking them to accept that a decision is inevitable. When postponements were no longer possible, they adopted a bill to repeal the special pensions that they knew were unconstitutional," Barna said.

USR also wrote in a Facebook post that after the bill adopted on Wednesday by the Chamber of Deputies special monthly pensions of 60-70,000 lei will disappear.

"Today, USR's three-year efforts led to a first positive result: special pensions in excess of 2,000 lei will be taxed 10% [the surplus], and those in excess of 7,000 lei 85%! It is less than 90% above the threshold of 3,500 lei, as we proposed in our own bill, but it is something."

At a plenary session on Wednesday, the Chamber of Deputies passed, 307 to 1, a bill amending and supplementing Law 227/2015 on the Tax Code regulating taxation of old-age income and allowances.