Declarații ale premierului Marcel Ciolacu la începutul ședinței de guvern

Marcel Ciolacu: I apologize for being late. I attended alongside Senate President Nicolae Ciuca a meeting with the business sector. First of all, I want to congratulate all those involved in amending the Romanian NRRP and its negotiation with the European Commission. I know that many said that we would fail, but due to this coordinated effort of the whole team, the right arguments and figures persuaded the European Commission to accept the plan. The most important thing is that we managed to eliminate that toxic threshold of 9.4% of GDP, which condemned Romanian pensioners to freeze their incomes for the next 50 years. Now we can enforce the new general pension law so that pensioners have a guarantee that year after year they have an income that protects their living standards.
The REPowerEU Programme is also related to the NRRP. Under the REPowerEU program, Romania got 1.4 billion euros, especially for the installation of photovoltaic panels and the energy efficiency of homes. This way, we directly support the consumers, 60,000 households will be able to access this grant, the value of which will amount to approximately 10,000 euros, cumulatively. At the same time, the Casa Verde Photovoltaic Programme was also unlocked, and the Environment Fund Administration is preparing a new session, and this time we will certainly have no more problems with the implementation.
Today we reassure that the public health system is funded until the end of the year. We are allocating 3.5 billion lei for medicines and sanitary items, plus, this week, 200 million lei for hospital expenses, and next week, the finance minister will come up with the difference for November of 196 million.
At the same time, we will approve by memorandum the necessary payments for the continuation of new large investments, at the Clinical Emergency Hospital in Timișoara and the Grigore Alexandrescu Childrens Emergency Hospital in Bucharest.
About supporting the private sector, today, we are increasing by 4 billion lei the total ceiling of the guarantees that can be granted under the IMM Invest state aid scheme, by December 31, 2023. The new ceiling ensures access to state aid scheme measures for an additional number of 4,500 companies. We estimate that by the end of the year, state aid will be granted to around 31,000 companies, supporting the private sector being, as is normal, a priority.
Otherwise, I see, despite all the difficulties, Minister Boloș has secured financial resources of 13.7 billion lei to cover the essential social expenditure of the state until the end of this year. We are talking about pensions, allowances, unemployment, education, health, and heating aid. In parallel, the minister is also coming today with information about the progress made in the implementation of electronic tax instruments, so that we can reduce tax evasion and collect more money to the budget.
At the same time, all important public investment projects will continue until the end of the year, without any deadlock risk. The Ministry of Development submits an emergency ordinance to support the smooth running of the National Local Development Program and the Anghel Saligny National Investment Program, and the Ministry of Finance proposes a more flexible mechanism, through which local authorities can commit new investment expenditure other than those with European funds. As I said before, we will keep public spending under control, but equally, we give the chance to all town halls, county councils, and other public institutions to complete the investments they started.
The Ministry of Agriculture has good news for Romanian farmers: an unrealistic proposal to reduce the amount of pesticides in agriculture was rejected in the European Parliament, and I want to thank the Romanian MEPs who voted against this demarche. It was normal to be rejected; it was rejected with 20 votes, because even now Romanian farmers use only a third of the European average, while farmers from other countries use quantities four times higher than the Romanian farmers. We also want environmentally friendly agriculture, but this cannot be done without taking into account the realities existing in each country.
And, speaking of the environment, there are only a few days left until November 30, when the guarantee-return system, the largest public-private project in Romania, comes into force. More than 85 million euros are allocated. We intend to collect 7 billion amount of waste to be recycled annually. I call on the Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, to use every remaining day to publicly explain the importance of this program and how it works, and I also want to congratulate him on his determination to implement this program. Thank you! Lets start the Government meeting!

Source: Gov