Incumbent Romanian President Traian Basescu requested PM Emil Boc to urgently reduce the number of state employees by 20%. He said that the cut in benefits is not making the public expenditure drop.

The chief of state declared in an interview for Radio Romania Actualitati that the government needs to be serious about it and to diminish massively the number of state employees, through "sending into redundancy a number of people that are unnecessarily burdening the state".

"Brothers, take the current number of employees and reduce it by 20%!", Basescu said, pointing out that "the Romanian Government must perform this operation. The question is whether it will be done in due time or too late".

Here are the most important statements President Basescu made:

Redundancy

Those benefits are featured by laws, people go in court and win, so there is no other option but reducing the state staff.The hangman game is close to its end and action must be taken now, no matter how much the ministers would like to protect their power and preserve their staff number.

The Republic of Moldova

Commenting on Moldova's Vladimir Voronin saying he is up for the closest cooperation with Romania, Basescu replied:

President Voronin cannot hope for my support to form the majority he needs in order to elect the new president.Maybe president Voronin remembered I gave him a helping hand at some point to form the majority after the last elections.

The economic crisis

There is a colossal need for investment in Iraq and there are money, but our companies wait for politics to bring these contracts to them.China is a market where there is plenty of good will on behalf of the authorities.The input from the first six months shows that Romania respected the IMF agreement.We will not be able to respect the parameters for December 31st, sin