The issue of special pensions, intensely debated in the past fewdays, brings into the spotlight a dramatic fact for a country likeRomania: a quarter of Romanians aged between 45 and 65 are notworking. Consolidated data reveal an even more dramatic situation:40% of people aged between 45 and 65 are unemployed.
According to data of the Statistics Institute, out of the 5.2million people currently aged between 45 and 65 (the retirement agefor men according to the new pension law), 2 million are notemployed. The figure amounts to more than half the number ofRomanian pensioners or half the number of social securityrecipients, who last year amounted to nearly 5.5 million. Thiscompares with 4.3 million employees at the end of last year.
In this light, the discussion of the past few days on the decisionof the High Court of Cassation and Justice to suspend therecalculation of special pensions of the military, of former policeworkers and of former special services workers, is only the tip ofthe iceberg. It is not just the 150,000-200,000 special pensions(for which nearly one billion euros is spent a year) that stiflethe insurance budget, which needs to be subsidised directly andfrom the state budget (basically from taxes), but also the generalsituation, which can hardly be expected to go on like that.
"Since 1990 we have lost four million jobs. Some of the formeremployees left Romania, some receive unemployment benefits, somesimply don't work, and some work on the black market. A solutionwould be to start building factories again, because not everybodycan work as a hypermarket employee," believes Vladimir Pasti,sociologist and political commentator specialising in the study ofpolitical and social developments in the Romanian transition.
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