President Nicusor Dan signed on Friday the retirement decrees for 73 magistrates, including the president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) Corina-Alina Corbu. 66 of the retirement decisions are effective as of August 1, while the others come in force starting September 1.
The head of the state also signed the decrees for the reassignment of 22 magistrates to other positions, and a decree acknowledging the resignation of yet another magistrate.
The magistrates' retirement is a hot issue, as the Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM) accused the president of delaying the signing of the documents, and President Dan tackled the subject during a press conference on Wednesday, mainly in the context of the upcoming legislative amendments covering this professional category. The president pointed the finger at the utter "disarray" regarding retirement applications in the judiciary, stating that roughly 70% thereof do not indicate a precise retirement date, and also that to their overwhelming majority, they ignore the requirement according to which a magistrate who intends to withdraw from activity should give the court they sit on a 90-day retirement notice, so that the respective institution be able to organize himself.
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced on July 27 that a legislative project is in the pipeline to increase the standard retirement age for magistrates to 65. The prime minister also proposed that the amount of a magistrate's pension be a maximum of 70% of their last net salary, not 80% of their gross pay, as now. According to him, "the actual calculation takes the gross income as a reference, so the proposal is 55% of the gross income over the last five years, but no more than 70% of the latest net salary."
Four professional associations of magistrates rebuked the bill amending the retirement conditions for judges and prosecutors, terming it an "irresponsible and constitutionally disloyal change attempt", and slammed the "constant campaign to denigrate and discredit the judicial system", which aims to "violently and irreversibly destabilize the judicial authority".
The magistrates' professional associations asked the judges of the Supreme Court to consider referring the bill to the Constitutional Court for review before promulgation, and the Supreme Council of Magistrates to call the general assemblies of magistrates to debate this piece of legislation. They also asked the CSM president to notify the Constitutional Court regarding the legal conflict of a constitutional nature between the state powers.
According to the Romanian Judges Forum Association, the government's proposals to modify the retirement age and amount of the pension could trigger the "immediate" retirement or resignation of over 1,000 judges and prosecutors.
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