ROMANIANS RALLIED yesterday against government plans for swingeing budget cuts, as union bosses warned of huge “Greek-style” strikes and protests against the austerity measures.
Hundreds of people massed in central Bucharest to complete a week of demonstrations in which thousands of Romanians, from prison guards to pensioners, have taken to the streets to oppose planned cuts of 25 per cent to state salaries and 15 per cent to pensions and other benefits.
President Traian Basescu and the centre-right government of his ally, prime minister Emil Boc, say a sharp reduction in state spending is the only way to stabilise the economy and secure payment of the next tranche of an emergency €20 billion bailout from international lenders.
Mr Basescu insists the cuts must be approved by parliament before mid-June to ensure swift approval by the International Monetary Fund and other organisations, but he faces strong resistance from opposition parties and trade unions.
The unions say they will bring 40,000 people onto the streets of Bucharest in protests next Wednesday, and will launch a full-scale national strike at the end of May unless the president and government back down on spending cuts and plans to shed 70,000 public sector jobs this year. The pay of some 1.3 million state workers has already been frozen.
The reforms face opposition from a broad swathe of Romanian society: hundreds of mothers plan to rally in Bucharest on Monday against a mooted cut in child benefit, and railway workers have threatened to bring the country’s rail network to a halt unless the cutbacks are tempered.
Outside the presidential palace in Bucharest, demonstrators chanted slogans vilifying Mr Boc and Mr Basescu, and waved banners saying “Resign” and “You lied, you need to go”. One sign carried a photograph of Mr Boc above the message: “Incompetence has a human face”.
After several years of rapid, credit-fuelled growth, Romania slipped into deep recession when the global economic crisis took hold.
Its leaders have resolved to cut spending rather than raise taxes in their bid to promote investment and revive the economy.
