Prime Minister Edi Rama says that judges' salaries will change only by decision of the Assembly and in full respect of the decision of the Constitutional Court.
Calling the impasse created with salaries in the judiciary a stale story, his reaction was immediate, as soon as the magistrates submitted a report to SPAK against the Minister of Finance Petrit Malaj, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, and 14 district Treasury directors.
Rama says that only his name and that of Justice Minister Toni Gogu are missing from that report, saying that Malaj consulted with them before signing the order to freeze salaries.
"The criminal complaint of the judges against the Minister of Finance for not allowing them to open the treasury door to increase their salaries, while the minister is waiting by law and custom for the Albanian Parliament to express its opinion on the decision of the Constitutional Court, has only one deficiency: My name and that of the Minister of Justice are missing, because the Minister of Finance has previously consulted with us about his position, for which our legal teams have unanimously expressed the position that the judicial power cannot open the door to the state treasury. Only the parliament can do this. That's all and I don't want to go into detail about what I think about this whole stale story of self-increase of salaries, from the best-paid category of the Republic of Albania. But as far as I'm concerned, nothing changes, salaries will be increased by decision of the Albanian Parliament and in full respect of the decision of the Constitutional Court," Rama writes.