In the public finance planning document there is an item that on average will increase the paychecks of magistrates by almost 100 thousand euros. This is a detail contained in the tables sent by the Meloni government to the European Commission. The total expenditure item for the State reaches 970 million euros.
The litigation
It was Il Sole 24 Ore that noticed the detail in the Dpfp tables. According to what the business daily reports, the adjustment in the pay slip is attributable to a legal dispute opened by the National Association of Magistrates and some ordinary magistrates.
The conflict arises from the calculation mechanism underlying the economic treatments. Magistrates, in fact, are part of the personnel under public law (like state lawyers, university professors and soldiers). They are workers who are entitled to an update of their wages every three years. An adjustment in line with the increases received by employees in the public sector.
Istat calculated the percentage and then the government adopted it with a decree. The magistrates challenged the one relating to the three-year period 2018-2020 and it went to court.
The sentences
The Council of State ruled in favor of the appellants with sentences 6003 and 6004 of 9 July 2025. In essence, the system used by Istat was rejected. According to the administrative judges, the calculation basis should not only include the salary, but also some allowances. Furthermore, it did not consider the Authorities to be independent and, above all, it emphasized the weight of the larger and less paid sectors of the Public Administration through the weighted average and not the simple one.
Therefore, in the DPFP, 970 million will be drawn from the sentence fund, equal to 1.9 billion euros. For the State this means paying more than 70 thousand euros to each magistrate as one-off arrears and around 20 thousand euros per year in salary.