Experts: Salaries Law Could Be Eliminated Again

Although, the Law for Salaries has been adopted in the Kosovo Assembly, the value of the cofficiency for public officials' salaries is still unknown. While the government has indicated that this value will be set during the month of January this year. But, experts say the adopted wage law violates the legal security of public sector officials, not determining the monetary value of the cofficients.

Gezim Shala, from the Kosovo Institute for Justice, told Radio Kosovo that in this case, no one has information about how much the salary will be.

“Determining the legal provision that the monetary value of the cofficiator will be determined in each year through the budgetary division Law, clearly affects judicial security for each person. This in each case will not be known for the following year what the salary will be and what monetary value of the cofficient. This has also been one of the reasons the past salary law was declared anti-unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court”, Shala says.

The IKD has called on the Ombudsperson's Institution to proceed under its constitutional and legal competencies to prosecute the Law on Salaries in the Public Sector to assess constitutionality at the Constitutional Court.

Shala, said that if the Constitutional Court estimates that only specific provisions are contrary to the Constitution, it is possible that only those provisions will be abolished, while the rest of the law leaves it in force. If you assess that the integrity of the law is contrary to the Constitution, then it can completely abolish the law.

Meanwhile, expert Safet Gerjaliu stressed that it does not do Kosovo honour that again this law goes to the Constitutional Court, until it stressed that the co-efficiency should be determined urgently.

“Should urgently be known, with the sole goal of employing employees having satisphation, the opposition is measured to send it to the constitutional or not. And perhaps such a law and a known coefficator will be indicator of the acceleration of other laws involving the social aspect of Kosovo at a time of both economic and social crisis, at a time of inflation, so any delay is loss for Kosovo and a blow for its citizens”, Gerxhaliu says.

Representatives of trade unions in Kosovo have expressed concern that the co-efficacy for public officials' salaries has not yet been defined.

Under the Law on the 2023 Budget, which was adopted in December 2022, the total public sector wage budget will be 745m euros. The Law on Salaries in the Public Sector was adopted on December 22nd, 2022. And after the president's decree, this law is published in the official newspaper.

On June 30th 2020, Kosovo's Constitutional Court had declared the Law on Salaries in the Public Sector invalid. Under the decision, the law was not compatible with 11 provisions of the Kosovo Constitution.