The Foundation For The Defense Of Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) has reported a series of concerning issues within the Romanian Railway Authority (AFER). The Director General, Constantin Andronache, has inexplicably doubled his salary for 2025, even exceeding the remuneration of the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure. Furthermore, AFER has allocated one million lei for the allowances of the five members of the Board of Directors, while the institution has admitted in an official response to FACIAS that it does not use any performance indicators to justify these amounts. Concurrently, the practice of recruitment and promotion on the basis of kinship persists without restriction within the institution.
In the context of the Government's recent adoption of austerity measures, namely the "train ordinance", the AFER has budgeted an annual salary of 420,000 lei (approximately 7,000 euros per month) for the position of general director, Constantin Andronache, for the year 2025. FACIAS has consulted his most recent declaration of assets, which shows a previous annual salary of approximately 178,000 lei, equivalent to €3,000 per month. It is noteworthy that in a year characterised by budgetary austerity measures, the head of AFER is set to receive a salary that exceeds more than double that of the previous year.
Concurrently, AFER has allocated a budget of 600,000 lei for the remuneration of the five members of the Board of Directors and another 400,000 lei for the remuneration of the delegations for the year 2025. This equates to a total expenditure of one million lei on the remuneration of AFER's management personnel. Concurrently, the average gross monthly earnings of the institution's 300 employees stands at 14,585 lei per employee, significantly exceeding the average gross monthly earnings in the public sector.
FACIAS points out that the large budgets for the salaries of AFER staff are approved without any real performance indicators, a situation explicitly recognised by the institution itself in the official response signed by the Director General, Constantin Andronache: "There are no performance indicators, the system for establishing basic salaries is the one provided for in Article 9 of Law No. 153/2017 on the Salaries of Staff Paid from Public Funds."
Furthermore, FACIAS highlights that within AFER, the practice of hiring and promotion based on family connections persists. For instance, the position of Director of the Economic Directorate is held by an individual who has a close relative employed in the same institution. Such instances have been brought to the public's attention since 2020, with the media repeatedly highlighting specific cases of hiring and promotions based on family ties or personal affinities. However, the competent authorities have yet to implement concrete measures to address this phenomenon.
FACIAS calls for the intervention of the competent institutions, including the Court of Auditors and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, to investigate how AFER manages public funds.