Salaries of Czech top politicians, judges and prosecutors will rise by 6.9%, and the additional money in the budget allocated for the original proposed higher pay increase will be used to raise the salaries of judiciary administrative staff, as decided yesterday by the government and announced by Transport Minister Martin Kupka after the cabinet meeting.
The pay increase corresponds to the development of wages across the whole society, said Kupka (ODS), adding that he did not fear that judges would challenge the government’s decision again at the Constitutional Court.
The pay rise still needs to be approved by parliament.
Kupka said the government wanted to negotiate with the opposition about support for its proposal. He said he considered it important to approve the bill before the end of the year to clarify the remuneration of judges and politicians for next year.
However, the opposition ANO has already announced that it intends to propose a five-year salary freeze for politicians. Today, the movement’s MPs asked for an urgent lower house session to be convened on this issue.
“It is understandable that politicians, judges and prosecutors were monitoring the development of average wages in the public sector and in the entire economy,” Kupka said. He noted that the government had decided that all three groups should see their salaries rise by the same percentage.
The original proposal envisaged a 13.7% pay increase, and was criticised from both the government and opposition benches.
Kupka said he was not worried that the judges would challenge the government’s decision again. He said it was a strong argument that the proposal provides for solidarity within the judiciary, with some of the money earmarked for the pay rise of judges and prosecutors going to judicial administrative workers who are underpaid.
The salaries of MPs, members of the government, the president, judges and other senior officials are calculated using a coefficient, applied to the average monthly wage per the calculated number of employees the year before. They have been frozen in recent years due to crisis situations.
In late May, the Constitutional Court said that this year’s reduction in judges’ salaries following a permanent change in the coefficient was against the constitutional order.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs subsequently drafted an amendment that modifies the rules for all constitutional officials, based on the court’s opinion.
However, the Constitutional Court pointed out in a press release that it had not addressed the constitutional character of the reduction in the politicians’ salaries.
