FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG IMPROVING SOCIAL PROTECTION IN ROMANIA Figure 1 The evolution of the structure of social expenditures measured as a% of GDP in Romania as compared to the EU-27 average 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 RO RO RO RO RO RO RO RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO EU-27 RO 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Sickness/health care Disability Old-age Survivors Families/children Unemployment Housing Social exclusion Source: Eurostat, data from 2000 until 2017. Tempo on-line dataset for Romania, 2018. No data for EU-27 as of 3 September 2020. Authors' own graph. Figure 2 The evolution of social expenditures measured as a% of GDP in Romania as compared to other CEE countries and the EU-27 average 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 EU-27 Bulgaria Czechia Hungary Poland Romania Source: Eurostat, data from 2000 until 2018. Tempo on-line dataset for Romania, 2018. No data for EU-27 and Poland as of 3 September 2020. Authors' own graph. Slovakia More specifically, spending on benefits that the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection classifies as“social assistance benefits”, i.e. benefits financed from the budget of the Ministry with general tax revenue(as opposed to social insurance funds) include not only universal or means-tested benefits, but also earnings-related benefits pegged to the payment of income taxes(such as paid child care leave). Vertical redistribution towards low-income groups is meagre: the two the main targeted benefits, namely the means-tested family allowance and guaranteed minimum income, accounted for only 6% of welfare spending(Ministerului Muncii și Protecției Sociale, 2020: 12). Figure 3. illustrates the structure of spending as of June 2020 and the low share of redistributive transfers. 4