2015 Annual Review of Labour Relations and Social Dialogue Romania VICTORIA STOICIU March 2016  Although the macroeconomic indicators point to a solid economic recovery in 2015, the social situation in Romania is not marked by considerable improvement. Despite the country’s high economic growth, the Government’s recent announcement of freezing the minimum wage in 2016 seems to have put an end to a five-year period of regular augmentation of the minimum wage. Inequality has increased while the unemployment rate and the percentage of people at risk of poverty declined insignificantly.  Albeit, some efforts have been made to improve social dialogue and labour legislation even though few actual changes have occurred in the area. The Social Dialogue law was amended in December 2015, bringing some changes to the Social Dialogue Act(62/2011) that en­larges trade union powers in the collective bargaining process. The draft law amending the Labour Code, which was the result of a legislative initiative carried on by the National Trade Union Block, one of the biggest Romanian umbrella organisations, is being debated in the Parliament.  The collective bargaining system is bearing the consequences of the 2011 social dialogue legislative reform. As a result of the high representativeness criteria imposed by that law, together with the structural weakness of the social partners, no sectorial collective agreement was concluded in 2015. The number of collective agreements concluded at the company level is similar with previous years but an overwhelming 85 per cent share of those agree­ments are negotiated and signed by the employees ’ representatives and not by trade union organisations. A series of protests and labour disputes took place in 2015, triggered by tense collective bargaining or by restructuring plans.