Embro Ahmetaj
Imagine for a moment that you are transferring money from one pocket to another and, suddenly, a hand stops you. Without giving you any reason, it forces you not to perform this action. Or that you are transferring your money, earned from your salary, from your account to your wife's and, suddenly, the bank does not perform this action.
This is an absurd situation and can be compared to the subjects of Kafka, whose characters are faced with the unreasonable. Well, it's not so absurd. On Tuesday, the court's finance clerk was notified by the treasury branch that the August salary had been blocked and would not be transferred to the account. No reason was given.
On 17.02.2026, the Constitutional Court, following the request of the magistrates' associations, repealed the amendments made to Law No. 96/2016 “On the Status of Judges and Prosecutors in the Republic of Albania” and considered the reference to the President's salary unconstitutional. The Court also determined the method of calculating the salary and gave the Assembly until 31.07.2026 to approve the amendments. The full decision can be found here. Time passed and the Assembly, intentionally, did not act. Under these conditions, at the end of August, like every public body and employer in the country, the courts and prosecutors' offices sent to the treasury the payroll for the salaries of the month of August, according to the determinations made by the Constitutional Court.
On 02.09.2026, treasury departments throughout the Republic (apparently coordinated) blocked, without any reason, all payments to the judicial system in the country. This includes the salaries of guards, nurses, secretaries, lawyers, economists, judges and prosecutors throughout the country. For clarification, the Treasury Department is a body under the Ministry of Finance, which liquidates everything from the salaries of civil servants to payments for contracts that the state has with private companies. The court is part of this payment system. However, unlike all other administrative bodies under the executive, the courts have a specificity, which is also the essence of the dispute. The courts are independent. The budget they request and are given by the Assembly, they administer themselves. This is one of the elements of the separation of powers.
However, this rule has been seriously questioned since 02.09.2026. The Prime Minister, like his Minister of Justice, who is pained by the expenditure of public money, stated on 06.09.2026 that the salaries of the judiciary are proposed by the executive and approved by the legislature, as if the judiciary is the Directorate of Government Services or some subordinate executive body. Taking this political opinion of the executive to the end, the verbal order to block the salary funds for the entire judiciary seems to have originated from the Ministry of Finance. In all this enterprise and zeal to not implement the law, there seem to be two problems. The first is the problem of the independence of the judiciary and the other is the concept of law enforcement.
The core of the problem seems to be the independence of the judiciary, while the relationship with the law and the binding nature of court decisions are a consequence of this. The rule that the Prime Minister tried to present to the public today, that the salaries of the judiciary are proposed by the executive and approved by the legislature, is completely wrong. At the very least, it is an incomplete account or a wrong teaching of the rule established by the Constitution. The worst, [which I do not want to believe], is the deliberate evocation of the ghosts of the past, when the judiciary was an annex to the implementation of party policies and not independent.
The salaries of the judiciary are determined by a law approved by the Assembly. In order to guarantee the independence of this power, they are approved with a minimum of 84 votes. The annual budget of the judiciary is proposed by the judiciary itself and approved by the Assembly. The executive is questioned. The relationship, in this case, is between two independent powers and the executive is in the role of guarantor. This is the rule and this is how it should be applied. The idea that, in this equation, the executive has a role is nothing more than the need to legitimize an action that is continuing to be carried out.
The executive's intervention to freeze salaries in the judicial system directly affects the independence of magistrates. This becomes even more sensitive when it comes to salaries. In order to be independent, they must be paid in a dignified manner. An unpaid magistrate is a vulnerable magistrate and, thus, justice becomes vulnerable. What is being built with great effort after the reform can be dismantled within days. The paradox is that it is being undone by another branch of power and not by external factors.
The other problem, equally serious, has to do with law enforcement and the role of the administration. On the first day of the lecture at the Faculty of Law, a question is asked: how does a policeman differ from a bandit with a gun who threatens you to take your wallet? This is a case with which the professor begins to explain obedience to authority, obedience to order, and what makes states just. What is the common denominator that distinguishes good from evil, a wrongdoer from a guardian of order, etc.? After much wandering in the field of philosophy, one of the correct answers is that the law is what serves as a persuasive authority. It is precisely the law that makes us obey the policeman willingly, while the bandit out of violence and fear.
The boundary that separates these two worlds is definitely the law. And if a person in power violates the law with conviction, he is nothing more than a wrongdoer. He no longer acts as an authority that implements what has been agreed upon through the law, but from the position of the strongest, because he can do so. The wrongdoer does nothing more. Convinced by the power of his arm, of his weapon, of the people behind him or of the system that he may have corrupted or put under the hooves of the incompetent, he may one day impose a fine, take your wallet or even rape you. This, one fine day, can also be done by the Minister of Finance.
Looking at the world through the consensus that law is what regulates relations in a society, this action is nothing more than the law of the strong. The executive apparatus is not acting under the protection of public authority, but only because it has the power behind it to carry out such an action.
Thus, the structures of the state are deformed and broken. The administrative employee is no longer free. He does not implement the law as an obligation of obedience, but the order of the strongest. He is afraid! If he does not implement an illegal order, he fears another evil that may be done to him: threats, insults, the workplace, the children's bread. This is the first step in damaging the backbone of the functioning of the state. Not with law, but with orders. Through this violence they seek to break the judiciary as well. The mere fact that this has happened, by not obeying the law, but the order of the strongest, with the courage assumed that this way they will intimidate magistrates, shows that they are trying to turn back time, to a time when everyone feared the police as evildoers and not as guardians of public order.
In the heat of Saturday, when everyone was on vacation and had made peace with the fact that a week had passed without a salary, the Minister of Justice suddenly appeared, announcing that he was in pain for public money. Robin Hood, the famous mythical character, had the same zeal for the money to go to the impossible people. Between the absurdity of evil, where Kafka's characters are found, and Robin Hood's kindness towards the impossible, there is no connection in time or purpose.
However, something unites them. Without wanting to compare Robin's noble kindness with the absurdity of the executive branch in our republic, they have one thing in common: the failure to implement laws and acting from positions of strength. Yes, while Robin was fighting against an evil government, the [Prime] Ministers, in this absurdity in which they seem to have sunk, are fighting the state they have been entrusted to lead. Therefore, beyond the disappointment that, due to the function they have, they should be there to contribute to the independence of the justice system and not to undermine it in the most brutal form, their statements, at the very least, seem unfounded.
What the entire executive is committed to blocking with all its zeal is the salary fund. Salary, in addition to being related to the work performed, is also related to dignity. With it, the necessary payments will be made, as at the beginning of every month, for children, parents and vital needs. And this is not just the salaries of judges. It is the salaries of over 2000 other employees of the judicial administration staff, from nurses to court secretaries. As such, contrary to what the [Prime] Minister claims about sensitivity to public money, these are not going to go to waste nor will they be wasted. Far be it from us to say that they are being given to a company that has not done the job and is being paid unfairly.
Even worse, they could be used to make any arrangement of the courthouse or office according to their whims, through procurement procedures. I would understand the minister if he had concerns of this nature about the use of the budget (as a whole), but not about the salaries of the entire judicial branch. I would like him to have the same reflection and at least express his doubt as clearly as today, when he raised his card and voted for an increase in his salary. However, I must say that if his colleagues across Europe were to take this action, it would be valid for the next legislature. But, in any case, this is a matter that belongs to another branch of government.
I read somewhere that people often do not like judges, because they see them as the keys to the dungeon of a punitive, harsh and powerful apparatus, the protectors of the law, the armed wing of the coercive force (of the state). This is perhaps also the reason, in the dialectic of the separation of powers, that the executive does not like us. Perhaps, in our reality, they have more reason to be angry. But this is not a reason to behave brutally, just because you have the executive power behind you. Precisely for this reason, because the judiciary is the coercive hand of the state, it must be respected even more. Only in this way can trust in the state be created, strong institutions be established and the rule that the court's decision must be implemented is finally understood.
Refusal to implement is not a solution; in fact, it is condemnable. These are the two fundamental principles; otherwise, the state cannot function as such. Without them, the republic cannot be parliamentary, the separation of powers goes to hell, the state can no longer be just, institutions will be buildings that house timid officials and unwilling to implement the law, brave and courageous people, masters of the destinies of others, with weapons in their hands, and the end result will be a society that languishes and rejects the state.
Those who should be the most responsible, it seems, are not. Now imagine for a moment if the gauntlet of the challenge of the absurd, thrown down by the executive, were accepted by the judiciary. We all go to work for a salary and, if we are not paid at the beginning of the month, we have no obligation to obey and serve anymore. So, imagine for a moment if all the judges put their platoons in the closet and did not come to work the next day, or if only the judicial administration did not come to work. There are dozens of Services that are received at the court counters, conflicts that are not resolved and remain pending, prisoners whose terms are running out, criminals who need to be arrested or innocent people who need to be released. Or imagine if all the criminals, for a moment, left their cells.
All of this requires a court decision. In this whole evil game of state dissolution, responsibility and accountability for duty and for what we have all sworn to do seem, so far, to be preserved only by the judiciary. And, fortunately. Because, otherwise, the end would be nothing more than what Saint Augustine says: if a kingdom (state) is deprived of justice, it is nothing more than a gang of gangsters and pirates.
This is an article that started on September 2nd and may still continue to be written... / acqj.al
