Prime Minister Luca Niculescu announced that there will be proposals to stagger the payment of the 5 billion lei representing outstanding salary rights of the magistrates.
“The Romanian state must respect the court rulings and pay its obligations. It is a state of tension that we obviously do not want to prolong. A discussion will begin, a dialogue to see how there can be an escalation. Of course, an amount like this is large, but at the same time it is a final court decision, we must respect it. But I have always believed in the power of dialogue, as a journalist, diplomat, coordinator of the OECD accession process, and now as prime minister. I think we have to have a dialogue and I think we have to find an agreement, because there will be proposals for staggering”, said Luca Niculescu on Tuesday evening, on TVR, according to Agerpres.
The Prime Minister added that the discussions on this topic took place for now only between the members of the Government.
“I think everyone in this country understands the context we are in and, at the same time, I think there are tensions that could be more subdued. We will have dialogue and, as always, I believe in a good result”, said Luca Niculescu.
“There will be no such thing”
In another matter, the prime minister reiterated his “firm desire” not to introduce new taxes and fees, which would be “difficult to bear” for the population.
“I think there are other ways to balance the budget. We can reduce expenses – and here we are already working in this direction – we can increase collection, because, as you know, Romania is the country that collects the least VAT in the whole of Europe compared to what it should collect. It has the lowest taxed revenues to the budget compared to what it should have. ANAF has already started to work better, but I think there is room for better and we have discussions with them and with the Minister of Finance. So our strong desire is to have no new fees and taxes”, he stated.
Luca Niculescu denied the hypothesis of the doubling or tripling of taxes on housing.
“Increasing the existing (taxes and fees – no) is something we will discuss once we have those figures (about the country’s budgetary fiscal situation, no). I think it depends on what we mean. I saw that there were discussions on doubling or tripling taxes on housing. In no case will there be such a thing,” he added.
Niculescu spoke about the positive example of Greece, a country that managed to increase VAT receipts.
“I’ll give you the example of a country that is not culturally far from us, Greece, which, of course, after going through a major crisis, managed to reduce its VAT gap, the difference between what it had to collect and what it received, from 30%, was like us, to 9-10%. (…) I spoke with colleagues. For example, we can link the POS to the cash registers and that can be done, I don’t know, in a relatively short time short, let’s say, one year, and that will already mean a clarification of some fiscal situations and a fairly significant GDP income”, the head of the Government also mentioned.
