Skopje, 27 November 2025 (MIA) – The country doesn’t have the amount of money the judges and public prosecutors are demanding. The amount we plan on securing is enough for them to have decent salaries, much higher than the average recorded in countries across Europe, said Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski answering questions at Q&A session in Parliament on Thursday.

According to the law, he noted, 0.8 percent of GDP for courts and 0.5 percent for prosecutors should be provided. It is 1.3 percent of the GDP, Mickoski said.

“I believe next year we’ll have 20.5-20.6 billion dollars of the GDP, which means that 260-270 million dollars should be provided for courts and prosecution offices, which is 3-4 times higher than now,” Mickoski told MPs.

Explaining the costs in other sectors and debts from the past, he believes that the budget should be approximately 8-9 billion euros, the expenditure side, i.e. the budget deficit should be between 8 and 10 percent of GDP. This, he said, is impossible, because when talking about reforms, one should talk about substance, not money. He noted that after this thesis failed, some of the judges and public prosecutors focused on the demands that they do not have basic means of work, computers, typists, assistants..., and that they should not have to wait for the government's approval for employment. The prime minister concluded that this was “ok” and that they would be given an autonomous budget, to manage themselves “from hygiene funds to salaries, and whomever they wanted to employ and engage.”

“We don’t have a problem to accept that and we will. I regret that we have to talk about this publicly, but we have to due to the public’s feeling about it. And, I do not accept a debate from certain centers that say it’s not a good thing to talk like this about the institutions, including the courts and prosecution offices,” said Mickoski. 

On the other hand, he added, if we accept a total budget for courts and prosecution, 1.3 percent, plus free legal aid, it will come to 1.4-1.5 percent of the gross domestic product, then the country will be a world record holder, with 2.5 times more than the country that allocates the most.

“We allocate 0.44, 0.45 percent, according to the Council of Europe report, which covers 2022 parameters. It was published in 2024. But that is more than the average in the countries covered by the Council of Europe. And 75 percent more than the member states of the European Union. This is a fact, I did not make that report,” Mickoski stressed. 

If conditions are created and if the budgetary consolidation allows, the prime minister stated, we have no problem to approve higher salaries only if the citizens start feeling that there is justice in the country and that someone truly fights for justice. 

Photo: MIA