Galery

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Yesterday, in pursuance of the relevant court decision, the government submitted to parliament a legislative amendment that restores the remunerations of all magistrates to the levels before the cuts, and in particular, to the levels before July 2012. At the same time, the government will proceed to repay the "difference" in the salaries of judges, retrospectively from 1 August 2012.

With this change, the chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court and the judges whose remuneration is within this range will receive a "gift" worth 34,690 euro. Accordingly, the magistrates at the bottom of the hierarchy will receive 7,624 euro. The amendment that was introduced yesterday does not determine the payment method of these amounts, which is why the government will request a joint decision by the Ministers of Finance and Justice.

In addition, according to the Chief Accounting Directorate of the Greek state, the basic salary of the chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court will be restored to its previous level of 4,134 euro per month instead of the current 3,023 euro whereas the magistrates at the bottom of the hierarchy will receive 1,488 euro instead of the present 1,369 euro. The allowance for the creation and maintenance of a library will be restored to the levels before the cuts and amount to 688 euro for the chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court compared to the present 500 euro.

In this way, the state budget will only once bear the burden of a total of 99.76 million euro, due to the retroactive repayment of the difference in the remunerations in addition to another 69.56 million euro that have to be found to cover the deficit, which will form after restoring the salaries to the levels before July 2012. It should be noted that the updated medium term plan that was approved in May provides measures to secure this amount of money. Furthermore, government spokesperson Sofia Voltepsi yesterday made it clear that "according to the order of the Prime Minister, the corrections of the salaries of magistrates will not apply to those of deputies."

While the government was introducing the amendment in question in parliament yesterday, the Ministry of Finance explained to the tax services that the court decisions will only apply to those who have filed a complaint and not generally to the social and professional groups to which they belong. These explanations were given regarding some decisions of the Supreme State Council, which defined as unconstitutional the taxation of the allowance for the creation and maintenance of a library paid to university professors as well as of the allowance received by civilian government employees when on a business trip abroad.

Yesterday afternoon members of the Ministry of Finance commented on these explanations, stating that the Ministry "will consider in the near future the issue in its entirety." They also noted that the Ministry wants to collect all court decisions creating gaps in the budget first and then subsequently, depending on the amount, it will develop a new strategy for dealing with the problem.

In practice, with these explanations, the Ministry of Finance urges all those who have been affected by various measures implemented over time to address the court. In addition, senior officials from the Ministry of Finance indicated that, in the cases of university professors or civilian public employees who have benefited from the decision and retroactively received the difference in their salaries without having filed complaints in court, each tax officer will be able to assess whether the amounts received will be demanded back and when.