The burden for Minister Giorgetti will approach one billion. Colleagues were granted the retroactivity that the Constitutional Court had instead denied to public employees
There are those who tighten their belts and those who want to win easily.
While citizens are looking for the third judge who lives in the literary forests, the category of magistrates is satisfied with the first judge and the second judge, i.e. those of the TAR and the Council of State. Who decided in unison to increase the salaries of their colleagues by accepting the ANM’s appeals against a government decree which established an adjustment to the arrears judged to be too low. According to the sentences “the determination is illegitimate”, consequently the State will have to reopen the stock market and recognize magistrates of all levels (for the three-year period 2018-2020) not 4.85% but 6.22%. In simple terms, this is 200 million more to be found in the next budget; around 16,000 euros each, certainly not “argent de poche”. With an aggravating circumstance for the coffers of the Ministry of Economy. Since the successful appeals will induce the National Association of Magistrates to propose them on an equal basis for the following three-year periods (2021-2023 and 2024-2026), the bill is destined to rise and reach close to one billion euros.
The battle with stamped papers has been going on for a few years, precisely since August 2021, and is a legacy of Mario Draghi at Palazzo Chigi. Then the ANM contested the adjustments due to errors in the calculation mechanisms and for having favored the “weighted average” parameter.
Now that river of money falls on Giancarlo Giorgetti’s head, forced to wear the Merlin wizard’s hat to satisfy the robbers, which other robbers (Tar and Council of State) have completely agreed with. Almost friends. Order number 5140 filed a few days ago also contains an ultimatum: the administrative judges have given the government until 5 September to “illustrate the methods and times for concluding the adaptation procedure”.
The ruling also put university professors on notice, who adopt the same mechanism and had not yet appealed.
All damned and immediately, please. Toga asks, toga gives. Caption from us perfidious people: did you want to challenge us with the referendum on the separation of careers?
The economic showdown came about because the administrative judges recognized three weak points of the Draghi decree: 1 it had not taken as a reference all the emoluments that contribute to the economic treatment of public employees; 2 had not taken into account the increases achieved in the previous three years by all categories of employees, including non-contracted staff; 3, instead of the criterion of the arithmetic mean of the per capita increases, had erroneously applied the parameter of the weighted average.
Now the dispute is closed, unless the Mef launches a new appeal which would risk accentuating the tug of war. In these cases, Flaminio Piccoli’s phrase on the infamous automatic progression of careers (1984) comes to mind, which Francesco Cossiga and Giuseppe Gargani were strongly against. “Listen Gargani, either the law passes or we will all be arrested.” Recent update from the blue skeptic Massimo Cacciari: «Justice is only the law of the strongest».
As anticipated by Il Sole 24 Ore, Istat has already redone the calculations, settling on the percentage of 6.22%, destined to increase since in more recent years costs have increased in at least two parameters: the adjustment of the previous three-year period increases the calculation base and inflation causes the numbers to rise. A billion-dollar joke, a thirteenth more for a category that certainly doesn’t suffer from poverty.
To date, the ordinary judiciary has average emoluments of 154,000 euros gross per year on 13 monthly salaries (11,800 per month), the military one of 152,000 (11,600), the accounting one of 174,300 (13,400), the administrative one of 188,500 (14,500), while the tax judiciary travels on 201,000 euros per year (15,400) and the State Attorney’s Office on 189,500 (14,500). The source is the State General Accounting Office.
It is curious to note how, when faced with a problem that is not the same but similar by logical correspondence, a few years ago the solution adopted by the Constitutional Court was diametrically opposed. We have to go back to 2015, when the blocking of public employment contracts by the governments of Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti and Enrico Letta was declared unconstitutional. Then the Council ascertained the illegitimacy of the provision but did not recognize the retroactive effects on the workers, who were prevented from recovering the previous sums.
There was talk of a political ruling. Article 36 of the Constitution was flaunted (“The worker has the right to remuneration proportionate to the quantity and quality of his work and in any case sufficient to ensure a free and dignified existence for himself and his family”).
There was discussion about the legal principle that the salary freeze must be limited in time. But Matteo Renzi’s government did not have to return a lost euro to public employees. The move caused teachers to lose 15% of their purchasing power, which they never recovered. And they didn’t have the parachute (6-7,000 euros net per month) of the magistrates.
