Abolishment of Law Articles Increases Salaries of State Officials by 78%

The decision of the Constitutional Court to abolish some articles from the Law on Payment of State Officials resulted with an average increase of 78% of the salaries of all state officials. For example, with these changes, the salary of the President of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, sour increase from April 2023 from 93,000 denars to 165,000 denars, the salaries of the ministers in the government would rise to just above 120,000 denars, while the salaries of MPs would increase to just above 100,000 denars. The initiative for abolishment of the articles from the law according to which the basic amount for calculation of the salary of state officials was 26,000 denars was filed by a lawyer from Skopje. With the abolishment, the basic amount in the law is now increased to 46,000 denars. Asked to comment on this decision, Deputy PM in charge of Economic Affairs Fatmir Bytyqi only briefly stated that “Law is law, and we all need to obey it”. In meantime, President Pendarovski called upon the government in a written reaction to find a legal solution to revert the situation. “I think that it is not all right for salaries paid from the state budget to be so greatly increased in time of crises and challenges in the country,” Pendarovski writes in his reaction.