DANA BAKO, CORNELIA POP DER DONAURAUM Jahrgang 46 - Heft 1/2006 Pension Reform in Romania. Main Problems and Expected Results INTRODUCTION There is no doubt that the pension level directly influences the life quality of elderly and/or disabled people and that civil society has a moral obligation to survey this situation con- stantly. Setting off from the principle that welfare has to be clearly separated from social security, civil society must become permanently involved in drawing up a country's so- cial policy. Welfare is addressed to the needy, regardless of the way they contribute to the budget, to provide them with the basic conditions of human existence. On the other hand, the social security system has the duty to offer high performance social services accord- ing to the level of individual contribution. Most of the social security services are option- al and as they should offer the best price/quality ratio, they have to be private. Both the pension system and the health system should offer the best quality services to those who are able to contribute more. Hence, the fundamental objective should be to widen the scope for individual decision and to narrow down the state authority over social services, which requires, first, a reform of the pension system. Connected to the social policy, civil society is involved in various projects such as fa- cilitating the social integration of disabled individuals by replacing state-run care institu- tions by day-care centres run by specialised non-governmental organisations, where such individuals would be assisted in professional training, work, or leisure time or programs for the protection of children, but its involvement with pension reform remained at a very low level. We will concentrate only on Romania's situation since it is very complicated due to the decrease of its economic growth during the 1990's and the slow pace of development at the beginning of the new millennium, as the following macroeconomic indicators show: 30 Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 7/13/15 9:14 AM