Judges’ Salaries, Rama: “You’re Speaking the Language of Ultras, You Cannot Order Parliament Around. The Dialogue Table Is Ready”

Prime Minister Edi Rama has criticized the public statements of a judge, stressing that salary policy is set by the government and approved by Parliament.

In a post on platform X, Rama called unacceptable the way, in his view, the independence of the judiciary has been interpreted. He added that this, in his view, is “not the language of a judge,” comparing it instead to the language of an “ultra.”

“It is unbelievable, yet true, that a judge understands the independence of the judiciary this way and sees the Albanian state budget this way… Never — this is not the language of a judge, it is the language of an ultra shouting in the street against VAR,” Rama wrote.

The prime minister stressed that no one can replace Parliament or order it when to vote. Rama said salary policy is proposed by the government, approved by Parliament and implemented by the executive.

He warned that if judges’ and prosecutors’ associations were to use coordinated political and legal tools to impose a pay raise on the government, that would amount to “a challenge of a new kind.”

“Pity, and a few simple truths: No one can replace Parliament, and no one can order the legislature when to raise its hand. Only the Constitutional Court, and no one else, has the right and duty to tell it when it has raised its hand wrongly — but even it can never tell the independent legislative power how to raise its hand.

Salary policy is proposed only by the government, approved only by parliament and implemented only by the government. The Constitutional Court intervenes only if a constitutional principle or norm is violated, which lawmakers must repair without being infringed in their independence, as they see fit to express it with their vote.

If, God forbid, the associations of prosecutors and judges have decided, with political and legal tools coordinated with prosecution and court offices like an army lined up against the government, to impose themselves on us with lawsuits, securities or enforcement orders to raise their salaries, then we face a challenge of a new kind, which does not frighten us but worries us immensely. But we do not want it to be so, and I do not want to allow it to happen this way, because unlike what this media judge thinks, this stratospheric-salary issue is for us not a matter of spite but a challenge of European state-building for Albania,” Rama wrote.

Rama nevertheless said the government does not seek a clash with the judiciary, underlining that the salary issue is not about “spite” but about what he called an important challenge for Albania’s European state-building.

Rama announced that the dialogue table between the branches of power remains ready, despite recent tensions.

“It is very simple. The table prepared for the requested and cancelled meeting remains ready. On September 17 only this publicly tense episode ends, which could and should have been avoided — but the need to communicate between independent powers does not dry up. On the contrary, it was not born from the salary episode and will only grow at every step toward membership in the European Union. But we have the table and the readiness; the rest is in the judges’ judgment :-)”, Rama wrote.