EY Romania: Fair Minimum Wage, no concrete action to transpose EU regulations in Romania

 The concrete actions carried out by the Romanian authorities to transpose the European directive on Fair Minimum Wage are failing to appear, say the EY Romania consultants."After more than a year since the adoption of the Directive by the European Commission and its entry into force, the concrete actions of the Romanian authorities in view of its transposition are failing to appear. Although this Directive appears in an annex published on September 13, 2023 on the website of the General Secretariat of the Government on the annual transposition plan of EU directives for the year 2024, we note that there is no additional information on the transposition timetable. Last but not least, it is worth mentioning that the competent institution designated for transposition is the Ministry of Labour and Social Solidarity, and the assumed deadline for implementation is November 15, 2024," reads a material signed by Claudia Sofianu, partner, leader Income Tax and Social Contributions, EY Romania and Dan Raut, manager, Income Tax and Social Contributions Department, EY Romania.Thus, according to the published Plan, the Ministry of Labour will draw up a series of draft proposals for the amendment of the Labour Code and the law on social dialogue, Government Decisions on the regulation of the mechanism for setting the minimum wage and for the establishment of the Action Plan for the promotion of collective bargaining."So, 2024 is coming up - a year with a busy electoral agenda in Romania: could next autumn be the time for a paradigm shift for what the concept of adequate/decent minimum income in Romania is? It remains to be seen," the EY Romania material states.The consultants specify that, earlier this year, they were pointing out that Romania must transpose into local legislation the European Directive No 2041/2022 on Fair Minimum Wage, a controversial but ambitious piece of legislation that aims to ensure a minimum socio-economic protection for vulnerable categories of workers within the European Union.As regards the Minimum Expenditure Basket for a decent living, in Romania, its value in 2023 for a single adult person has been evaluated at 3,807 RON (with an increase of about 40%, from 2. 708 RON last year), according to a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Romania and Syndex Romania (reported in September this year), so for such a net (minimum) income the corresponding gross income would be about 6,507 RON.