All public employees in Romania will see their salaries increase as the Chamber of Deputies adopted on June 7 the public wage law, News.ro reported. The law passed with 188 votes in favor, 28 against and 47 abstentions.

The Chamber of Deputies is the deciding factor and the law will now be sent to President Klaus Iohannis for approval.

The public wage law is one of the most important components of the governing program of the Social Democrat Party (PSD).

The wage increases in the public sector that will be made next year will up the government’s salary expenses to RON 75 billion (EUR 16.5 billion), or 8.6% of the GDP, according to finance minister Viorel Stefan. This year, the wage expenses are estimated at RON 66 billion (EUR 14.5 billion).

At the end of May, president Iohannis said that any hope that he could ask for the law to be altered is “slightly out of place” as the law has been a project of the PSD, which will be “entirely and definitively” responsible for it.

The president also said that the option of him asking for the law to be analyzed again does not guarantee that the parliament will go through with his request. “Even if I sent it back to parliament, if those who wish to have the law as it is, want it to, this is how it remains,” Iohannis said.

The Save Romanian Union (USR), a minority parliamentary party, said it planned to notify Romania’s Constitutional Court regarding the wage law, as its budgetary impact is not known, News.ro reported.

“We had a public debate with the trade unions regarding the first draft of the law and ever since then we and the unions said this law is unconstitutional for various reasons. One of them, the main one, is that, if we look at the current form of the law, it says it doesn’t have an impact on this year’s budget and for the next four years there is no mention regarding the budget impact. The government actually doesn’t know and it is improvising regarding the budget impact of this law,” said USR deputy Cristian Seidler, quoted by News.ro.

The Romanian Labor Minister Lia Olguta Vasilescu said on June 6 that the salary increases in the public sector will take place starting January 1 of next year, whereas doctors and education personnel will get additional salary increases starting March 1.

New wage law draft provides high salary increases for employees in Romania’s public sector

editor@romania-insider.com