The decision of the High Judicial Council to increase the reference salary of judges is not simply an administrative decision for the August payroll. It could open one of the strongest institutional clashes between the judiciary and the government, with the Ministry of Finance at the center of the crisis.
With the act approved this Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Justice decided that from August 1, 2026, the salary of judges will be calculated on the reference salary of 222,425 lek, from 156,800 lek that was previously. Together with the addition for the level of qualification, in the amount of 14,000 lek, the basic reference salary goes to 236,425 lek.
In the letter, the KLGJ says it is implementing Decision No. 15 of the Constitutional Court, which overturned the 2023 formula that linked the magistrate's salary to 0.36 of the President's salary. The Constitutional Court considered this a "hidden reduction" in the magistrates' salary, since in the meantime the salaries of the public administration had increased and the previous reference would have given judges a higher salary.
But the problem now is not only legal. It is financial and institutional.
In practice, following the Supreme Court's decision, the Ministry of Finance must decide whether to immediately implement this formula, by issuing the relevant instructions and releasing salary funds for institutions, or to refuse its implementation, with the argument that salaries are determined by law and not by internal administrative orders.
This is where the new absurdity begins.
If the Ministry of Finance implements the decision, the government loses the space to intervene later with another lower formula, because any future change could be read as a violation of the financial guarantees of magistrates. In other words, the “Bani formula” could become a new reference point: any salary increase in the administration or any change in the public salary structure would automatically lead to requests for proportional increases for magistrates as well.
If the Ministry of Finance does not implement it, then the conflict moves to another phase: the judiciary may be forced to seek enforcement in court.
The most extreme scenario would be that, if the court rules in favor of the magistrates and the decision is not voluntarily executed from the state budget, the case would end in enforcement. In this case, the enforcement may request the execution of the financial obligation by affecting the state accounts, in order to transfer the relevant amounts to the magistrates' accounts.
So, a decision on wages can turn into a clash where the state faces the very mechanism of compulsory execution.
This is precisely what makes the situation unprecedented. The Supreme Court is not simply approving a new salary scale. It is taking over the implementation of a constitutional decision under the circumstances when the Assembly failed to act within the deadline set by the Constitutional Court, until July 31, 2026.
At the KLGJ meeting, member Albens Tabaku openly stated that the Assembly's inaction creates an unconstitutional situation.
"The decisions of the Constitutional Court are binding on all public authorities, including the Supreme Court of Kosovo. The Constitutional Court has decided and the Assembly has not acted. The Assembly's inaction constitutes an unconstitutional mechanism," he said.
On the other hand, the government and the majority have submitted to the Assembly a new proposal, which maintains the President's salary as a reference, but increases the coefficient from 0.36 to 0.38. According to the report of two socialist deputies, Aulona Bylykbashi and Admir Kadeli, the formula aims to maintain the balance between the financial independence of magistrates and the sustainability of the public salary system.
But this proposal did not resolve the vacuum created by August 1. For this reason, the Supreme Court decided to implement the Constitutional Court's interpretation itself.
The decision affects not only current salaries, but also arrears for the period April 1, 2023–July 31, 2026. According to the internal acts of the courts, these differences must be calculated individually for each magistrate, while the full payment depends on available budgetary funds.
This means that the clash is not only related to the August salary, but to a much larger bill that the state may be forced to recognize and pay.
Essentially, the issue has now moved beyond the technical debate over coefficients. It has turned into the question of who has the final say when the Assembly fails to act: the government, which maintains the state treasury, or the judiciary, which seeks to enforce the Constitutional Court's decision?
So far, the Supreme Court has chosen to move forward. Now the ball is in the hands of the Ministry of Finance. If it implements the order, the government practically accepts the new formula. If it does not, the clash could go to court and then, in the worst-case scenario, to execution on the state's accounts.
And herein lies the paradox: a decision taken to guarantee the financial independence of the judiciary may end up testing to the limit the real power of the state to implement its own constitutional decisions.
