The minimum wage should have been maintained at its current level in 2026 and this seems to me a lack of respect for what social dialogue means, because the decision was taken within a political coalition, not in the National Tripartite Council, as the law currently stipulates, IMM Romania (National Council of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Romania) president Florin Jianu told a press conference on Thursday.
'(...) We maintain the same approach, namely that for 2026 it would have been more necessary to keep the national minimum wage, to reset the economy, to start first with measures for economic recovery and only in the middle of the year to sit down at the table. It seems to me a lack of respect for what social dialogue means, because the decision was taken within a political coalition, not in the National Tripartite Council, as the law currently stipulates,' Jianu said.
In the view of the head of IMM Romania, whenever we talk about increases in the minimum wage, we are talking about legitimate demands.
'We have always agreed, as you know. There were years when employers requested more substantial increases than the trade unions did. Think that we started from 2,250 lei in 2022 and reached 4,050 lei. So an exponential increase, well above the accumulated inflation rate of recent years. Why? Because the economy allowed it. The first to ask were the entrepreneurs. At this moment they have said Attention, we cannot afford to increase the minimum wage,' precisely in order not to affect workers' incomes and not to affect companies. Eight out of ten companies have stated that they are already affected by the measures taken and three out of ten will lay off staff. These things must be taken into account when making decisions. They should not be strictly political, strictly electoral commitments. The local taxes and duties that have increased at this moment will affect the lives not only of small entrepreneurs but also of the population in general. Property taxes on apartments are doubling. All of us, each one of us, will pay more and nobody says anything about this. We are fixated on one thing, that of the national minimum wage, in which the Government is actually misleading us all. It collects more, it costs the entrepreneur more and the employee does not see more money in their pocket, because 50-60% of it has already been taken by the state before they even see that money,' Florin Jianu added.
The governing coalition, which met on Wednesday at Victoria Palace, announced that it had reached an agreement on increasing the minimum wage to 4,325 lei starting on 1 July 2026.
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