Kelemen Hunor: Working group to look into special pensions

Chairman of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR), Deputy Prime Minister Kelemen Hunor, said that he proposed at today's ruling coalition meeting the setting up of a working group to deal with special pensions and determine which socio-professional categories should collect pensions higher than the contribution to the retirement plan, given that several "extremely different" solutions to this problem are currently being put forth, agerpres reports.

Asked what solutions could be found for the magistrates' pensions, given that the Constitutional Court has ruled that the lawmakers should steer clear of cutting the benefits of this category, Kelemen Hunor said that the issue is not to slash anybody's pension, but that there are a lot of unfair elements in the system which require a thorough, consistent examination, free of all demagogic bias.

The UDMR leader also defended the mayors' special pensions, stating that they should not be scrapped given that as public servants, the mayors are subject to certain restrictions and must steer clear of incompatibilities.

In his opinion, someone who enters public service is entitled to predictability.

"In the public service there are certain requirements regarding incompatibility, certain restrictions, you cannot do certain things, and for this the state offers one extra points upon retirement. This is what a useful, correct discussion should be about, to determine if the state should really do this for those in the public service. There has never been a thorough discussion on this, we did things that probably weren't very logically thought out, then we scrapped and next re-established certain benefits and so on. So, someone who joins the public service should enjoy predictability, and this goes also for someone in the private sector, or the academic system as well. (...) The working group will come up with a proposal, a proposal the coalition must agree upon," concluded Kelemen Hunor.