The day Parliament rules on salary and pension cuts

Parliament, where those in power have a comfortable majority, is ruling today on the austerity measure programme proposed by the Government of Emil Boc. If the motion of censure filed by the Opposition is denied, the state budget will see 2.2 billion-euro savings.
If the motion is denied, which will most likely happen, there is only one step left before the enforcement of the 25% cut of public sector salaries and the 15% pension cut: a challenge filed with the Constitutional Court, on which the Opposition MPs, the budget sector employees and pensioners are pinning all their hopes.
Both PSD (Social Democratic Party) and PNL (National Liberal Party) have announced they will file a challenge with the Constitutional Court of Romania. Their actions could delay the enforcement of the laws even further, because the judges of the Court do no have a deadline for delivering their ruling.
After the measures have been enforced, the International Monetary Fund's Board will discuss the release of a new 850 million-euro tranche of Romania's loan, which should go into NBR's reserves.
The austerity measures announced by President Traian Basescu at the beginning of May are the harshest measure taken to reform state spending in twenty years.