The National Liberal Party (PNL) government has defended jobs throughout the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 epidemic, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban told a plenary sitting of Parliament on Wednesday.

"You have called me to unveil the measures related to the local elections, the start of schools and (...) to combat COVID. You have not called me to unveil the economic measures of the PNL government. Let me show you something: our government has defended jobs throughout the economic crisis triggered by the epidemic. Look at the data on REVISAL [the general record of employees]. I do not venture out-of-thin-air figures, ordinary lies, which have absolutely no basis in reality. The number of employees on employment contracts active as of August 3: 5,589,435, the number of employees on January 1, before the outbreak of the epidemic and the related economic crisis, (...) was 5,582,008. These are data taken from REVISAL, and I doubt that REVISAL lies. So there are 7,430 more employees," Orban said.

He made the clarifications as Social Democratic Party (PSD) lawmakers reproached him of not mentioning economic measures in his speech.

"You are speaking of one million unemployed, but official data with of ANOFM [the National Employment Agency] as of today show 256,000, of which 76,000 unemployed are still drawing unemployment benefits (...) What I give you are official data that exist in databases," the prime minister said. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Florea, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Cristina Zaharia)