Evening remarks left room for doubt

Romanian Prime Minister Luca Niculescu was asked on Tuesday evening, 20 October 2026, the day his government was invested, whether the second pillar of private pensions could be changed. He said he had not yet considered the question and that several ministers in the government could answer detailed queries. He added that he would respond himself at some point, but that it was still too early. He also said he would make more information public once he had more data.

“In normal circumstances, the second pillar should remain as it is.”

Clarification on 21 October

On 21 October 2026, as he left the Ministry of Investment and European Projects, Niculescu was asked whether the money in the second pillar could be used for other purposes. He answered that nobody touches the pillar and that the savings accumulated in it will not be diverted. The question followed earlier proposals, made in past years, that the money in the mandatory private pension funds could serve as a source for Romania's financial recovery. He also linked his position to the country's need for predictability, a point he made in the same remarks.

“Nobody touches the second pillar. It exists and will exist as it is.”

In the same period, Niculescu discussed the country's European funding, saying about 3 billion euro could reach Romania's economy through the PNRR. Among his priorities he listed finishing the PNRR by the end of the year, clarifying the sums that can still be drawn, and speeding up the absorption of cohesion funds.

Disputed figures and fund size

The reported weight of the pillar in the economy differs between accounts from the same morning. One report quoted Niculescu saying the pillar holds about 20% of gross domestic product, while two others quoted him at about 12%. Data from the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF) cited in the coverage put the pillar's assets at about 243.4 billion lei and more than 8.5 million participants at the end of August 2026. A separate report from ASF on the second half of 2026 shows a significant rise, compared with last year, in the number of Romanians now collecting money from their pillar 2 accounts.

Earlier attempts to nationalise or dismantle the pillar

Past initiatives sought either to nationalise the second pillar or to weaken it de facto by removing the obligation to contribute. Most of these intentions were announced in 2017 and 2018, when former PSD leader Liviu Dragnea led the PSD governments of Mihai Tudose and Viorica Dăncilă from behind the scenes. In 2018 the Dăncilă government discussed changing the system's architecture, including letting participants choose to send future contributions to the public pension system. Emergency ordinance OUG 114/2018 allowed a participant to request a transfer to the public system after at least five years of participation, while sums already accumulated would stay in the private fund until retirement. That measure did not itself nationalise existing assets, but it fed fears about the pillar's role.