The Supreme Judicial Council wants the judiciary's budget for next year to be 996,193,700 euros. The forecast for 2027 is 1,043,693,100 euros, and for 2028 - 1,142,052,700 euros. The Supreme Judicial Council submits its own version of the budget to parliament, but as a rule, the deputies vote for the version of the Ministry of Finance.
The draft for next year provides for an 18 percent increase in the salaries of magistrates and employees, writes "Lex". The percentage increase was calculated based on a model of the dynamics of changes in the average salary in the budget sector in recent years, it was learned at the meeting of the Plenum of the Supreme Judicial Council, at which the project was adopted. The Ministry of Finance was asked not to increase salaries due to the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund to limit the growth of salary costs in the public sector.
However, the Law on the Judiciary binds the lowest magistrate salary - of junior judges, prosecutors and investigators, to twice the average monthly salary of employees in the budget sector according to data from the National Statistical Institute.
The largest are personnel costs. For 2026, 836,647,400 euros have been set aside, with 622,274,100 euros for salaries. The Supreme Judicial Council is investing 61,355,000 euros in its own revenues.
In the judicial budget for 2025, the National Assembly voted 150 million leva in revenues from court fees. This is 50% more than in previous years. The personnel officers consider this amount to be unaffordable and therefore plan to allocate less for next year, as well as for the next 2 years.
The draft budget includes 42,439,500 euros for additional workload remuneration. Of these, 2,301,600 euros are for the Supreme Court of Cassation, 2,296,900 euros for the Supreme Administrative Court, 18,695,800 euros for the courts and 19,145,200 euros for the prosecutor's office.
5,828,660 euros are planned for salaries for 152 new posts that are about to be opened. "There are probably arguments for the need for more magistrates and employees in certain units, but why is this not done at the expense of closing and transferring posts from less busy units. In addition, the system (as of August) maintains 716 unfilled posts. Meanwhile, according to the latest data from the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), after Latvia, our country has the largest number of prosecutors relative to the population in the EU. In terms of administration in the prosecutor's office, we are first, not only in the EU, but among all member states of the Council of Europe. Bulgaria is in fifth place both in terms of the number of judges per 100,000 people and in terms of court administration," says an analysis on the topic of the judicial budget by the Institute for Market Economics.
Salary expenses in the judiciary have doubled since 2022. According to the budget execution report as of August, the average monthly salary of a magistrate reaches 8,731 leva, and that of employees - 3,117 leva.
The financial stability of magistrates is an inseparable part of the guarantees for the independence of the judiciary, the IME emphasizes. However, they point out that preserving the mechanism for a 2% class of seniority along with an increase in remuneration upon promotion in rank and position, as well as other merits, seems problematic at the very least. It is also a vicious practice to make the budget based on staff numbers, and then distribute the savings from unoccupied numbers as bonuses.
For capital expenditures, 72,347,200 euros are planned for 2026, 40,639,100 euros for 2027, and 31,724,700 euros for 2028.