The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) ruled on Wednesday that there had been no legal conflict of a constitutional nature between the Government and the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) over the payment of judges' salary arrears, CCR officials told AGERPRES.
The Constitutional Court rejected, as unfounded, the referral submitted by interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, after the High Court sued the Government and won the first-instance case concerning outstanding salary payments resulting from increases established retroactively by court rulings.
In July, Bolojan justified the referral to the CCR by arguing that the court "had substituted itself for the executive and legislative branches in budgetary matters and the management of public finances."
He argued that "the judiciary has neither the technical competence nor the legitimacy to determine how public money from a general consolidated budget is distributed, forcing the Government to allocate funds to a single sector," namely the Justice area.
In his view, "the court directly disrupts the national budgetary balance," an act that represents "a direct interference" in the executive branch of the state.
On 5 May, the Bucharest Court of Appeal upheld the action brought by the High Court of Cassation and Justice and ordered the Government and the Ministry of Finance to pay judges' salary arrears, including through a budget revision.
The interim prime minister mentioned 4.8 billion lei, representing salary arrears awarded by the courts.
The Court of Appeal also ruled that the Government and the Ministry of Finance must enforce the decision within 10 days of the court ruling becoming final, with penalties of 1% for each day of delay, amounting to 48 million lei, as well as a fine of 20% of the national gross minimum wage for each day of delay.
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