Bucharest Councilors Slam Local Budget for 2021

Bucharest councilors slam General Mayor’s budget for 2021 on Wednesday, April 28, in a meeting which was supposed to approve the Capital’s budget for this year.

The councilors from the “reformist” party, USR-PLUS, decided not to back the budget anymore, to the surprise of mayor Nicusor Dan. His surprise was even more when thinking that USR-PLUS was the coalition who proposed and supported his candidacy during the local campaign. The apparent reason was stated by the Bucharest deputy mayor, Horia Tomescu:

In the draft budget there are estimated revenues of around 7 billion RON (EUR 1.4 billion). I was surprised to see that sum in the budget, as during all the conversations we had with the General Mayor, he mentioned 4.5-5 billion RON (1 billion EUR). (…) We have reasons to believe these estimations are not reasonable.

Bucharest Deputy Mayor, Horia Tomescu

On the other hand, the General Mayor Nicusor Dan expressed his disappointment in the behavior of his former party colleagues: “I am stupefied!“.

The leading party of the governing coalition, National Liberal Party, accuses USR-PLUS that its councilors slammed Bucharest’s budget for other reasons. Apparently, the local political crisis started after the minister of Health was fired for a series of mismanagement acts. The bone of contention would be the fact that deputy mayor Tomescu, a close acquaintance of the former minister of Health, was not offered decision-making power over the management of Bucharest hospitals, including the management of the budget for the hospitals: 72 million EUR.

Following this crisis, Bucharest doesn’t have a budget for 2021, even though we’re in late April. If the councilors don’t vote the budget, starting from May, Bucharest won’t receive any payments from the country’s general budget, as it happens at the moment.

Nicusor Dan warns that Bucharest could go into default unless the budget proposed is voted.