A rule inserted in Italy’s budget law to curb spending on salary adjustments for magistrates does more than restore the weighted-average method for linking their pay to public-sector salaries. It also removes a change introduced in the accounts by the Council of State by excluding from the calculation base the arrears generated by delays in contract renewals.
The new limit does not cover the 2021-2026 period that was the subject of the administrative judges’ decisions, but it seeks to stop the risk of geometric cost growth fed by the parameters set out in those rulings. According to the source, those parameters required €241 million to settle 2021-23 and €738 million for 2024-26, €979 million in total, plus an effect on the following year.
Magistrates, like university professors and top military officers, do not have a contract and receive periodic pay adjustments measured against the average per-capita increase obtained by the rest of the public sector over the same period. Ordinary and administrative magistrates challenged the Istat parameters used for the 2021 and 2024 decrees; the TAR and the Council of State annulled them, asking for a simple average—giving more weight to small categories with livelier salary dynamics—and for arrears from late-signed contracts to be included. The new rule reverses both points. To avoid further litigation, it introduces permanent parameters but does not intervene on costs accrued so far, whose payment remains tied to the appointment of a commissioner ad acta because Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is unwilling to sign the revised decrees.
Sources: Il Sole 24 Ore Italia.