Ilie Bolojan changes the rules for magistrates: retirement at 65, pension level - 70% of net salary

The retirement age of magistrates will increase to 65, and the amount of their pension will be capped at a maximum of 70% of the last net salary, announced Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan yesterday in a press conference organized at the Victoria Palace. Basically, the Government proposes a radical change regarding special pensions, aimed at correcting a major imbalance of social equity and budgetary sustainability, in a context in which judicial pensions far exceed the national average and create a deep rift between citizens and the state.

"Two-thirds of magistrates retire at 47, 48 or 49 years old. The average net pension is 5,000 euros. An average pension in Romania is somewhere between 500-600 euros. It is a very big difference and nowhere in European systems does such a provision exist,” declared the prime minister, underlining the absurdity of a system in which the pension can exceed the salary in payment and in which the professional experience accumulated is lost prematurely, at a time when society needs it most.

The new legislation will also impose an increase in the length of service required for retirement, from 25 to 35 years, accompanied by a clear mechanism: for each year of early retirement, the pension will be reduced by 2%, in the spirit of contributory principles.

"It is difficult to demand reforms from citizens if special pensions are maintained at a level that represents great social injustice,” explained Ilie Bolojan, adding that the proposed solutions were built in accordance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court and good European practices.

Unlike the old formula, in which the pension represented 80% of the gross salary - often higher than the net salary, the new formula establishes a reasonable ceiling, compared to the economic reality of the country and to what pensions mean in EU states.

The reform is all the more urgent as Romania risks losing hundreds of millions of euros in European funds.

"We have withheld over 800 million euros for three unfulfilled causes in the PNRR, of which over 230 million represent the amounts related to this issue,” warned the head of the Government yesterday. But the stakes are not only financial. It is about the credibility of the state, about justice as the foundation of a functional society and about the government's capacity to bring order to a system that has already caused enormous damage: over 10 billion lei paid in recent years, as a result of court decisions in lawsuits filed by employees of the justice system, due to legislative ambiguities.