Judges who raised magistrates’ salaries through final rulings have violated five decisions of the Constitutional Court / “That doesn’t matter,” rules a judge from the Bucharest Court of Appeals

In 2008 and 2009, the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) issued five decisions intended to put an end to the practice whereby courts granted salary increases to magistrates, even though the salary laws adopted by Parliament did not provide for such increases.

Although CCR decisions are generally binding on all public authorities, courts systematically ignored these five decisions in the years that followed and continued to issue final judgments granting salary increases to magistrates.

- articolul continuă mai jos -

This is how what began as mere inconsistent case law became a systemic phenomenon with a devastating budgetary impact: the salary arrears owed to magistrates, accumulated strictly as a result of these final judgments, amount to 5.2 billion lei—or one billion euros—for this year alone.

This is the amount that the President of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Lia Savonea, is claiming from the Government in the lawsuit she filed on March 30 of this year with the Bucharest Court of Appeals and which, of course, she won as early as the first hearing.