Governing coalition meeting at Victoria Palace

The governing coalition meeting has begun at Victoria Palace. The meeting is taking place after a long break and is expected to be tense, as the announcement that Romania is entering a technical recession has reignited the political conflict between the partners. Moreover, some PSD ministers intend to block the approval of the ordinance on reducing administrative spending, a project that Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan would like to adopt at Thursday's executive session.

RRA editor Petruta Obrejan, who is at the Government headquarters, provides us with information: "The coalition meeting will not be an ordinary one at all, because the leaders of the four governing parties will have to discuss the entry into technical recession, the public administration reform, the draft budget for this year and, last but not least, the economic recovery measures.

Many of these topics are seen differently within the coalition, so that, while Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan talks about a temporary technical recession and says that the effects of the austerity measures will be seen in the second half of this year, when Romania's economy will have the premises for a solid recovery, the Social Democrat Sorin Grindeanu wrote, not more than three days ago, on a social network, that we are not going in the right direction after so many months of austerity, sacrifices, taxes and increased prices.

Another disagreement within the coalition also concerns the way to adopt the administration reform package, which aims, among other things, at reducing personnel expenses by 10%. There are at least three social-democratic ministers who will not apply this measure, and if now the intention was to commit the Government to responsibility for this reform in Parliament, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan believes that the fastest way for this reform to be supported.... would be through an emergency ordinance, explaining that the measures would be implemented immediately, which could not be done in a procedure for committing responsibility, which involves several stages and, therefore, more time.

If initially within the coalition it had been decided that the public administration reform and the economic recovery measures would be adopted together, as a single legislative package, the Prime Minister launched the idea, three weeks ago - say political sources - of separating them into two projects, but which would be adopted at the same time, something that could happen right at this week's cabinet meeting."

Translated by: Radu Matei