Mass departures from the courts: employees leave as salaries fail to compete in Hungary

Court workers are departing in large numbers due to persistently low and increasingly uncompetitive salaries. Despite record inflation, salaries within the courts have remained stagnant for the second consecutive year. Stakeholders warn that the court system is on the verge of becoming unmanageable, while the justice ministry attributed the lack of salary increases to the judiciary.

Since the last salary increase for court workers, there has been a 35% decrease in purchasing power, coupled with a 34% rise in average earnings. This implies that court workers have experienced a loss of more than a third of their salaries’ value over the past two years according to 24.hu.

“I’ve been a judge for thirteen years, presiding over serious cases, yet even a skilled worker earns much more than I do”

a judge told 24.hu.

The judge further asserted during the interview that it is hard to ignore the evident intention to deplete resources from the courts. The starting salary of a court clerk ranges from HUF 316,000 to 346,000 net (EUR 813.60 to 890.84) , which falls below the average salary in Hungary. The interviewee also said that:

In the courtroom where judgments are made, all the officials, experts and seconded lawyers earn significantly more than both me and my colleagues.

A familiar situation

The situation among court workers appears to mirror that of teachers, with an increasing number of workers receiving only the guaranteed minimum wage, as indicated by their pay slips, which suggest that they may not even earn that much. The starting salaries for court workers with various qualifications are as follows, as outlined in the pay scale:

• Clerks and technicians with non-specialised higher education and secondary education: HUF 215,000 – HUF 266,000 gross (EUR 553.56 – 684.87), with the lower limit exceeding the guaranteed minimum wage after 26 years of service.
• Officials and technicians with higher professional qualifications: HUF 238,000 – HUF 397,000 gross (EUR 612.77 – 1022.15), with the lower limit exceeding the guaranteed minimum wage after 8 years of service.
• Law graduates and trainee experts: HUF 300,000 – HUF 419,000 gross (EUR 772.40 – 1078.79), with the lower band being below the guaranteed minimum wage.
• Qualified court secretaries and judicial experts: HUF 476,000 – HUF 521,000 gross (EUR 1225.55 – 1341.41).
• Judges: HUF 821,000 (EUR 2113.81) for district courts while HUF 905,000 (EUR 2330.09) for courts of law.

Sándor Szabó, Secretary General of the Hungarian Association of Judges, told 24.hu that the current turnover rate within the courts marks an unprecedented challenge in the history of the Hungarian legal system, posing a significant risk of systemic dysfunction.

Cause and effect

Although the pay situation for court system employees was recently addressed – salaries were increased by a total of 57% in three stages from 2019 to 2022 – that increase only managed to clear a fifteen-year backlog. Despite this effort, judges’ salaries in 2022 remained significantly below the European average. The situation was compounded by Hungary’s subsequent experience of double-digit inflation. As courts endeavour to fill the vacancies left by departing staff through extensive reorganisations, the task grows increasingly challenging, as observed by legal professionals: the waiting period for reports and judgements is on the rise, causing even straightforward cases to endure prolonged delays.

Reaction from the National Office for the Judiciary

The Secretary General of the Hungarian Judicial Association aims to align judicial salaries with the average gross salary across other branches of government. They proposed to the justice minister last summer that judges’ salary base should be set at 125% of the previous year’s average gross salary, implying a 13.8% increase by 2023.

The National Office for the Judiciary highlights that a proposal for a salary increase would not only revise the salary base for judges but also necessitate adjustments to various other elements within the salary system. Achieving these objectives requires more than mere amendments to the Finance Act.

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