Accusations of sabotage

Raluca Turcan, a PNL deputy and former minister of labour, launched a sharp attack on Social Democratic Party (PSD) president Sorin Grindeanu over the proposed law on public-sector salaries. In a Facebook post on 25 July, she said the PSD is deliberately undermining a reform that Romania pledged to deliver under its National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). She contrasted Grindeanu’s criticism of the current bill with the fact that three PSD labour ministers had previously failed to complete the same reform.

“To be the president of PSD, after your party had three labour ministers who missed one of the most important reform objectives in the PNRR, endangering non-reimbursable European funds of hundreds of millions of euros, and then to attack a bill that is radically improved compared to the version left behind by the last PSD minister, for which a million euros was also paid in consultancy, means to show an unimaginable bad faith and a lack of the most basic decency.”

She noted that any good-faith criticism of the law is welcome, but accused the PSD of political sabotage rather than constructive engagement. Turcan insisted that interim prime minister Ilie Bolojan is trying to complete a commitment Romania made to its own citizens and to European partners.

The history of the reform

The salary law reform is one of the key milestones Romania must meet to unlock EU funds under the PNRR. According to Turcan, the PSD held the labour ministry through three successive ministers yet repeatedly missed the reform objective, leaving behind an unfinished project and endangering 770 million euros in non-reimbursable funds. The current draft, she argued, is a radical improvement over the version inherited from the last PSD minister, and was developed with consultancy costing one million euros.

“Instead of contributing to the correction of a project that his own party dragged out for years, the PSD prefers to politically sabotage it. I wonder how many people of good faith in this country cannot see that the salary law is being improved by people who are repairing what others left unfinished because they were more concerned with vote hunting, electoral and political comfort than with the reform Romania needed.”

Bolojan’s timeline

On Thursday, 23 July, interim prime minister Ilie Bolojan stated that the draft law on public-sector pay is not yet finalised. He signalled that the bill would be the subject of debates in a separate extraordinary parliamentary session at the beginning of August, distinct from other legislative projects. That announcement came before Turcan’s 25 July social-media post, which intensified the political clash over the reform.

Personal attack on Grindeanu

Turcan did not limit her criticism to the salary law. She questioned Grindeanu’s leadership credentials in personal terms, describing his political record as a string of bluffs that end in failure.

“Sorin Grindeanu takes, day by day, the exam of his impotence as a political leader. Plan after plan turns out to be only a bluff, and promise after promise turns into failure. And so I ask: why would he have respect for public-sector employees when he hasn't even had respect for his own party colleagues? He convinced them he had solutions for governing, for Romania and for the PSD. The result is the same every time: another flop. After another flop.”

The direct assault on the PSD leader marks an escalation in the coalition’s internal tensions ahead of the August session, where the salary bill will once again be on the table.