New "specials" in the budgetary system

According to a draft emergency ordinance currently in decisional transparency on the website of the Ministry of Finance, the Government wants to exempt 32 people from the budgetary system, civil servants, from the stability austerity measures for the year 2025. From the analysis of the provisions contained in the initiative of the normative act, despite the provisions of the "Trenuleţ" Ordinance, which provided for the freezing of the salaries of budgetary employees at the level of November 2024, the Executive already seems to be moving away from this approach.

According to the document currently in public consultation, the beneficiaries of these exceptions are mainly the specialized legal staff in the Ministry of Finance, the General Secretariat of the Government (SGG) and the Ministry of Justice. Thus, the specialized legal staff in the General Legal Directorate of the Ministry of Finance, with responsibilities in ensuring legal assistance and representation in litigation, will benefit from a salary increase of 50% applied to the gross basic salary. This benefit will be applied to a number of up to 20 people within the department. Also, employees of the General Secretariat of the Government with responsibilities in "ensuring documentary and archival support, respectively specialized legal assistance" will receive the same increases, but the measure is limited to only seven people.

Within the Ministry of Justice, specialized legal staff "equivalent to judges and prosecutors", involved in international litigation, including arbitration, will also be remunerated according to the new regulations. Here, the number of beneficiaries is even smaller, being limited to a maximum of five people.

In total, only 32 people will be exempted from the austerity measures and will benefit from these increases. However, given the high level of salaries in the Justice and Executive branches, these benefits raise questions regarding budgetary sustainability, in the context of an extremely high deficit.

The explanatory memorandum of the draft GEO motivates these increases by the need to "increase the degree of involvement of public authorities in managing issues specific to international arbitration disputes". An example cited in this case is the painting "San Sebastian" by El Greco, which is to be auctioned on February 5, 2025 by Christie's in New York. The authorities claim that the disputes associated with this case require increased efforts from the legal staff involved, thus justifying the salary incentives.

However, the measure raises questions, because other categories of public servants who manage complex files or a large volume of work are not included in this exception. Moreover, the exemptions directly violate the principles of Framework Law no. 153/2017 on the remuneration of personnel paid from public funds, which explicitly stipulates the principles of equality, non-discrimination and financial sustainability.

We recall that the year 2025 began under the sign of austerity in Romania, with the drastic measures imposed by the Ciolacu 2 Government to keep the country on the path of reducing the budget deficit from 8.6% in 2024 to 7% by the end of 2024. Through the "Ordinance". Trenuleţ" adopted at the end of last year, the Government established that, in 2025, the salaries of public servants, operating balances and allowances will be maintained at the level of November 2024. At the same time, bonuses, compensations and compensations were capped or completely eliminated, and the austerity measures were justified by the need to "create a budgetary space to support public investments" and "preserve the budgetary balance". Moreover, on December 31, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu declared that every leu paid in salary will be justified by performance criteria and evaluations, and state employment will be frozen in 2025. In addition, he announced the establishment of the Department for the Efficiency of Government Activity, aimed at reducing state spending by 1% of GDP.

However, this policy seems to be violated by the new draft GEO, which exclusively protects certain categories of public servants. It remains to be seen whether the Government will extend this type of derogatory measures to other categories of public servants, in an attempt to maintain a balance between austerity and the need for fair remuneration of civil servants.

We also point out that while the Government has money to increase the salaries of the new specials, the same draft emergency ordinance orders the suspension of the issuance to the National Authority for the Restitution of Property of payment titles made based on the provisions of Law no. 165/2013, regarding the measures for completing the process of restitution, in kind or through equivalent, of real estate taken over abusively during the communist regime in Romania and respectively Law no. 164/2014 regarding some measures for accelerating and completing the settlement process of the requests formulated under Law no. 9/1998 on the granting of compensation to Romanian citizens for the goods transferred to the Bulgarian state following the application of the Treaty between Romania and Bulgaria, signed in Craiova on September 7, 1940, as well as Law no. 290/2003 on the granting of compensation or indemnification to Romanian citizens for the goods owned by them, seized, retained or remaining in Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Herţa Land, following the state of war and the application of the Peace Treaty between Romania and the Allied and Associated Powers, signed in Paris on February 10, 1947. The new suspension seems to no longer take into account the legitimate expectations of the beneficiaries, many of whom have been at the age of senility for too long or have died in the meantime.