The Parliament plenary voted on the state budget law for 2024. 299 MPs voted in favor of the budget, and 82 votes were against. On Tuesday, the parliamentary budget-finance committees met gave a favorable report on this project.
“I would very much like to have a fair debate, at the committees, at the parliamentary groups, both of those who created this coalition and of the opposition. No one knows the absolute truth, but we start from the principle that being the representatives of the Romanians in the most important forum of democracy, we are people of good faith”, said Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, after the vote on the budget.
“I would have liked to have this speech, these debates, as between colleagues, as between friends. I think I had a lot to say about the irresponsibility, the excessive death, and more. But, with all due respect to the institution you represent, because I cannot say that I have respect after yesterday’s attitude in the Parliament, I am in the spirit of the holidays and I will refrain”, he added, referring to the incidents and insults on which the parliamentarians brought to them yesterday, during the debates.
“It is a budget for Romanians, not for politicians. It is a development budget. Investment is greater than consumption. Taxes will not increase next year,” the prime minister said.
During the voting of the amendments to the project, the president of AUR, George Simion, announced that the parliamentarians of the formation are leaving the hall of the combined plenary session of the Chamber and the Senate and are not voting on the budget for the year 2024, as a sign of protest because PSD and PNL did not grant teachers the promised salary increase, of 40%.
In response, the interim president of the Chamber of Deputies, Alfred Simonis, asked Simion why the elected members of the AUR did not vote for their own amendment and told him that maybe if they voted for the amendments, then it is possible that the rest of the parliamentarians would have voted for them as well, according to News.ro.
Over 20,000 amendments were submitted, of which only 962 were accepted. Each parliamentarian had one minute to support his amendment in plenary. Also, the plenary session of the two Chambers rejected, on Wednesday, the USR amendment regarding the elimination of pensions for mayors and presidents of County Councils and the one regarding the Capital’s budget, submitted by Forţa Dreptei, which requested the return to the Capital’s initial budget. Instead, the PNL deputy Florin Roman announced that the Parliament adopted the article of the budget law by which it blocks the increase of taxes and fees in Romania, in 2024.
At the same time, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate adopted, in the plenary meeting on Wednesday, an amendment of the UDMR, which the parliamentary committees had initially rejected, and which provides for the allocation of 10 million lei in the budget of the Ministry of Education for the initiation and organization, from March 2024, of the running of the National Program to support the learning of the Romanian language and literature.
The Parliament also voted on the draft Law on the state social insurance budget for the year 2024. 294 votes for and 84 votes against were recorded. The draft law provides for and authorizes for the budget year 2024 the revenues by chapters and sub-chapters and the expenses by destination for the state social insurance budget, the unemployment insurance budget, the synthesis of the budgets of public institutions partially financed from own revenues.
The government approved, on December 15, the draft laws on the state budget and the state insurance budget for 2024.