The Ministry of Finance supports the increase of judges’ salaries to 35 subsistence minimums
Deputy Minister of Finance Roman Yermolychev said that the Ministry of Finance supports the proposal of the Council of Judges of Ukraine to increase the basic salary for judges of local courts to 35 subsistence minimums for able-bodied people.
The draft State Budget for 2025 provides for additional financing of the judicial system in the amount of 1.627 billion hryvnias. Of this amount, 1.3 billion hryvnias are planned to be allocated to the payment of bonuses to judges, and the rest to the accrual for other payments. The Ministry of Finance proposed to allocate these funds for the payment of bonuses to judges of first instance courts in the amount of 40% of the official salary.
However, this initiative caused objections from the Council of Judges of Ukraine and the High Council of Justice, which stressed that the current Law “On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges” does not provide for the payment of bonuses to judges. In order to implement this proposal, it will be necessary to make changes to the legislation.
Questions also arose regarding the fairness of the mechanism for determining the amount of bonuses and who will be responsible for making the final decisions regarding their payment.
The Council of Judges of Ukraine proposed a more appropriate solution – to allocate 1.6 billion hryvnias to increase the basic salary of judges of local courts from 30 to 35 subsistence minimums for able-bodied people. This would make it possible to increase the salary of judges of courts of first instance even in case of “freezing” of the living wage at the level of 2,102 hryvnias. Thus, in 2025, the official salary of judges would increase from 63,060 hryvnias to 73,570 hryvnias.
This will bring the level of remuneration of judges of the first instance closer to the salary of judges of the appellate instance, which will contribute to greater fairness in the remuneration of judges.
