The new draft pension law was yesterday sanctioned by the PD-L National Standing Bureau (BPN) and will be presented in the government, PM Emil Boc announced in a televised press statement. He assured that the bill observes the principle of contribution, it eliminates special pensions and would secure a public pension to all Romanians at the end their professional life, according to HotNews.

Statistics show a total of 4,364 million workers and 4,742 million retired (not including people retired from agriculture) in November 2009. The ratio is 10 workers to 11 retired people.

Some of the decisions that have affected the budget are the massive wave of retirements between 1990 and 1998 used as a mask for unemployment generated by privatization, loans from the pension fund used to fill budget voids, too young retirement ages – in 1990, women retired at the age of 53 and men at the age of 58 - taking over people retired from bankrupt industries (cooperatives) to the public budget, in 1993, the introduction of exceptions and privileged to the pension law that, between 2003 and 2008, led to the emergence of pensions for special categories (members of Parliament, magistrates, officers, etc.).

‘The money was returned during periods of excessive inflation, which made the actual worth of the money to be much smaller,’ Professor Marian Preda, the Dean of the Faculty of Sociology of the Bucharest University, explains.

‘The decree no. 60 passed in March 1990 retired over 500,000 workers in a matter of months’ former Labour Minister in the Radu Vasile Cabinet Alexandru Athanasiu explained for ‘Adevarul’ daily. In Roman’s opinion, the pension system was not unhinged not by the number of retires, but by ‘the inadmissible decrease of the number of employees.’

According to the National Statistical Institute (INS) data, under the Nicolae Vacaroiu Government (1992-1996), 500,000 workers retired. Many of them were made redundant by the first privatisations, but there were also other categories, says ex-Minister Athanasiu. In 1996, the pension fund had a deficit (0.23 GDP), and losses had to be covered by small loans from the State Treasury. The Democratic Convention of Romania (CDR) and the governments led by Victor Ciorbea and Radu Vasile implemented large-scale restructuring projects leading to massive layoffs – unemployment was 10 per cent in 2000. Special pensions, for example, offering a special treatment to retiring magistrates, MPs, ambassadors and civil aviation pilots, were introduced one by one by the Parliament from 2003 through to 2008. The total number of people with special pensions was 330,000 in 2009. During the Adrian Nastase Government, Romania has 4.4 million workers and 4.5 million retired people (not including people retired from agriculture). During Calin Popescu-Tariceanu’s term (2004-2008), pension expenses reached USD 13 bn (EUR 9.2 bn), as the pension point was raised from RON 295 (January 2005) to RON 697.5.