Historic Decision: Invalid Law Declared for Salaries

After two consecutive suspensions, the Court ruled that this law as a whole is not compatible with some provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo.

The court has said it has come to the conclusion that the controversial law was not in line with salaries at the level of all sectors. It has stressed that there have been arbitrary and unreasonable exceptions to some institutions, including: The Kosovo Security Force, the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, the Kosovo Kosovo Privatisation Agency, the Central Bank of Kosovo, and the Parliament itself.

The court concluded that, the exceptions accorded with the controversial Law openly oppose the purpose of the comprehensive harmonisation of which it is said to have been issued. Consequently, the exceptions were considered to go against the purpose of the Law itself and create unreasonable, undesirable and arbitrary differential”, the Constitutional Court says.

Just five days after the new Law for Pays went into effect in December 2019, the Ombudsman had sent it to the Constitutional Court for assessment of its compliance with the Constitution. This institution has been asked to impose temporary measures on the implementation of this law. Because according to the ombudsman it is necessary to protect public interest to avoid the irreparable damage that could be caused by the implementation of the Law for Pay.

This requirement has been made after the ombudsman has accepted 35 complaints by various subjects of the public sector filed against the Law for Pays, including complaints by workers in health, education, police and civil service.