Clash with magistrates/Rama announces new law on salary hierarchy

Prime Minister Edi Rama, speaking in Parliament after midnight before the Socialist Party’s draft law on magistrates’ salaries was approved, said work had begun on drafting a new law to rebalance the salary hierarchy.

The prime minister stressed that the practice whereby every salary increase in the country must also lead to an increase in the justice system must be brought to an end once and for all.

“There is a need here for a new law to put an end to this situation, which began when, during the reform, no timeframe was set for when the hierarchy would be rebalanced. It was not stated clearly and explicitly that you would receive this now from Albanian taxpayers, much more than everyone else, because the reform requires you to make an extra effort, but that this would not be a permanent increase.

Whenever others receive a raise, you will receive one too, because then, as I said at the outset, we would create the first state of its kind in the world. And I challenge everyone to show me, at least in the past 2,000 years, a system in which judges have ranked above everyone else in terms of taxes. It does not happen. It is nonsense,” Rama said.

Rama announced that, regarding the new law, contacts had begun with the Council of Europe and the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice.

“We have begun contacts with the Council of Europe and the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice. And I received all those people you had before the relevant committee, because they requested a meeting and we arranged it.

We arranged the meeting according to their wishes and conditions, in the sense that we gave them every opportunity to speak, to have a discussion, and to tell them that there is a problem here that we will address together. We cannot enter into a conflict between branches of government, and we are ready—not merely ready, but fully committed—to drafting a new law.

There are several ways to do this, but this practice whereby every time a salary is increased in the Republic, a salary there must also be increased, has to end. This is absurd. Of course, the Constitutional Court’s ruling must be respected. But a Constitutional Court can never tell a lawmaker, ‘Raise your hand like this because I have decided so’,” Rama said.