Military and police personnel pensions below 3,000 RON not subject to cuts

Labour Minister Mihai Seitan yesterday said that cutting the special pensions of the aeronautic and diplomatic personnel, as well as of the MPs and magistrates would translate into 100 million-euro savings a year, but said nothing about cutting the pensions of the 146,000 former military, police and secret service personnel, who together collect almost 700 million euros in pensions from the state. The employees of such institutions do not make contributions toward pensions during their employment and do not get their pension from the public pension budget, but from state budget allocations to the ministries in question.

The pensions collected by the 146,000 former employees of secret services, of the Interior and Defence Ministries, the SRI (Romanian Intelligence Service), SIE (Foreign Intelligence Service) and SPP (Guard and Protection Service), which are lower than 3,000 RON (i.e. most of them), will not be affected by the 15% cut the Government applies to all other pensioner types. Interior and Defence Ministries account for 94% of the total special pensions, 135,000, while the rest are allocated to over 8,000 magistrates and MPs. A monthly special pension may exceed 9,000 RON.