Romania will collapse if no investments are made in parallel with borrowing for the payment of pensions, and the People's Movement Party (PMP) supports the Orban Government but requests that the EU funds are used as a compensation for the loans that have to be raised for pensions, former President and PMP MEP Traian Basescu said on Friday.
"The situation is not rosy, but anyway it was not unknown. What shocks me is to see them ingenuously coming on TV to relate about the budget hole caused by pensions. Anyone who looks at the substantiation of the pension law, which the Opposition has voted as well - I don't know if PMP has voted on it - can see this clearly stated: an 8-billion deficit in 2019, a 24 billion-deficit in 2020, 53 billions in 2021 and 81 billions in 2022. Add them up and the result is 136 billions. (...) The pension law cleared Parliament with the substantiation on the table for everyone to see. So why complain about surprises? My request is that we should follow the party line and base our statements on realities. Stories where one pretends not to know what the reality looks like and all the TV chatter don't hold water. The pension deficit was a well-known issue. So that the problem they have to handle now is not how the deficit appeared, but how to finance it, and this cannot be done otherwise but through loans. And they must be raised because I understand that everyone from the President and PM to the ministers agrees that the pension law won't be changed anymore; yet Romania will collapse if no investments are made in parallel with borrowing for the disbursement of pensions," Basescu told the PMP National Council meeting in Sinaia.
According to the former head of the state, "a country cannot live just off loans, one has to put something next to the loans, and that 'something' are the investments from European money that idles unspent".
"The key to the success of the Orban Government is whether it will use the European money for investments, to create jobs and offset the loans it has to raise for the pension law. The pension law must indeed be enforced, I don't want us to be demagogical, particularly the retirees with small pensions are living a dire life. And a solution must be found. (...) Something had to be done about the pensions. Of course, we are not discussing here the special pensions which, had the government respected its promise, should have been cut right from the first government meeting, when they should have switched to the contribution-based system. The government must improve its administrative capacity to manage projects and make them happen. (...) We support the Ludovic Orban Government, but he we will ask it to do this, to use the European money to offset the loans that have to be taken out for pensions," said Traian Basescu.
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