Judges Union demands salary increases, Rama: Great Abuse also violates the Constitution

Albania's Union of Judges' request for another salary increase has sparked Prime Minister Edi Rama's strong reaction, which through a post on social networks named this as a <x0) major abuse” affecting the constitutional foundations of the state.

“For the second time in three years, the Judges Union seeks renewed court salary”, writes Rama, calling the practice <x1unikale, unmarked and unknown in the history of the states”, so that judges can determine their own salaries through judicial decisions.

The prime minister recalled that a similar case had occurred in 2022, when the Union asked the Constitutional Court for the judges' basic salary to match that of the Prime Minister's Department Director or a percentage of the president's salary. The court accepted the request, leading to a basic salary of 156,000.

Below is the full reaction of Prime Minister Rama:

Interesting “!

For the second time in three years, the Judges Union wants to re-upreach salaries in court!

A unique, unrecognizable and unknown practice in the history of states that judges assign themselves salaries through the court but that occurred in Albania in 2022, when this Union asked the Constitutional Court for the judges' basic salary to be equivalent either to the president's principal's salary or at a percentage of the president's pay, at the request of the judges.

And the Constitutional Court accepted the request, guaranteeing a basic salary of 156,000 dollars!

But this scandalous intervention of the judiciary in executive competencies has apparently tasted Union so much that after the administration's May 2023 salary increase, the Judges Union now re-requireses the court's salary increases! This time around, the Union wants the basic salary to be linked only to the department's basic salary in the prime minister and requires re-inquiring the law.

While in 2022 The Union wanted to ensure a basic amount regardless of any calculation, today it requires that, as a result of the administration's salary, wages would be raised and not a little but a total of 700 euros!

So this Union understood as an eternal privilege the fact that to support the independence of the judiciary and empowered judges who came out of Veting, we with the Justice Reform increased the wages of the justice system immediately for ten years, knowingly breaking the wage pyramid of the Republic of Albania! So according to Union, this republic will be the only one in the world, where judges will not allow the climbing of broken wage pyramid, because unlike the entire world in Albania, their salaries will not be raised by government and parliament, but by trial!! ...

Now, I very much wish that the bitter joke of the Constitutional Court the first time we accepted in silence as a nonsense that should be overcome for the sake of the silent respect of a judicial decision. Because silence against any abuse, with our support for justice, is no longer an option for us. Moreover, in this case it would be a major, multidimensional abuse, which would affect many and many, starting with the Constitution itself and the seriousness of the Republic of Albania”. /Periscopi/