The Government wants to commit its responsibility in Parliament for the reform of local and central public administration, along with economic recovery measures, before February 1, declared Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan.

He was asked on Friday whether the Government's commitment to Parliament for the reform of local and central public administration, along with economic recovery measures, would be postponed to February.

'The procedure for assuming responsibility is a procedure that lasts several days. When I said in the first part of February, I took into account assuming responsibility before February 1 and carrying out the procedure, closing the procedure in the first part of February. So, the goal is to assume responsibility of the Government before February 1. It is simply a matter of convening Parliament in an extraordinary session. Parliamentary activity begins on Monday in a week, and then it is logical not to hold another meeting a few days before, at the end of the week,' Ilie Bolojan said on Radio România Actualitati.

In this context, he was also asked if there are 'cracks' in the governing coalition and if, in the event of a motion of censure, coalition MPs could appear to support such an approach.

'The Government's support, apart from public statements, is tested in Parliament and when the Government assumes responsibility, it will be the test of parliamentary support. In the conditions in which a motion of censure is submitted, after that, a vote on this issue will certainly be held and this support will be tested,' Bolojan also stated.

In this context, he also mentioned some of the economic recovery measures that the Government is going to take responsibility for in the package that will also include public administration reform.

'In the discussion we had, these two projects would be adopted in the same package. We, as a country, in addition to correcting the negative budgetary accumulations that we have registered in these years, are in a situation where, in order to develop Romania in the coming years, we must put our economy on a sound footing. (...) The legislation will define support packages that will support, for example, research and development components, that will support foreign investments in Romania, in order to attract them, that will support certain sectors that have value in the future, for example, the rare metals component - I gave you a few examples. All these details are being finalized these days and by next week, these two packages should be fully finalized,' said Bolojan.

Regarding the reform of local and central administration, he was asked if there would be partial staff reductions, by 10%.

'Certainly, where, based on a correct calculation of the number of employees, it is found that the staff is oversized, staff reductions will take place. Considering that a 10% reduction in salary expenses is proposed, taking into account all the savings that were made last year - for example, pre-university education will not be affected, because it was the increases in norms that meant reductions in expenses anyway - each ministry, each authority, analyzing its respective specifics, will be able to take the necessary measures so that the institution functions properly. But what should be understood? In the conditions in which we have the deficits that we have, the cost of reducing the deficit must also be taken over by the state apparatus, which in many places is oversized. And it is very clear from the analysis of the structure of local public administration that if this law were to be applied, in over 700 administrative-territorial units, so the mayors, which have a smaller staff, even with the new grid, so they do not have to do anything at all. But the others have an oversized staff. So, two-thirds of the administration in Romania needs a staff reduction,' Bolojan also stated.

At the same time, he emphasized that in order to have investments in the coming years in local administration, we must correct the things that were done poorly in these years.

'And the money that this country has, from the taxes that Romanians pay, must be directed towards investments that solve local problems correctly or generate development, because, if we do a budget analysis, we see that in 2024 and 2025 we had some enormous investments, so we pumped a lot of investments that, if they had had a good multiplication effect, would have generated economic growth. But it was seen that our economic growth began to decline, although investments were among the highest, because, obviously, some of these investments no longer have a large driving effect,' Bolojan also declared.AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Daniel Florea, editing by: Florin Marin; EN - writing by: Catalin Cristian Trandafir)