Deleting the pay cap in the Pa is not demagogy
The Constitutional Court's ruling is well grounded not only in law, but also in economics and sociology
3' min read
3' min read
A decision that concedes nothing to demagogy and populism, motivating not only on a legal level, but also on an economic and sociological one. This, in a nutshell, is sentence no. 135 of 2025 of the Constitutional Court, which cancelled the 'cap' on civil servants' salaries introduced by art. 13, paragraph 1, of DL 24.4.2014, no. 66, converted, with amendments, into Law 23.6.2014, no. 89, restoring - as of the publication of the sentence - the force of the previous law.
In legal terms, the ruling clarifies that the 'salary cap' was introduced in 2011 in an exceptionally serious situation of financial instability, induced by a severe Italian sovereign debt crisis. That it could only be justified if it was of a cyclical and temporary nature, in relation to a very special situation. So much so that, just three years after the entry into force of Article 13(1) of Decree-Law No. 66 of 2014, the Court itself ruled out that the level of remuneration in question had been unlawfully compressed permanently, and not only temporarily (Sentence No. 124 of 2017). A conclusion, this one, that for ruling no. 135 cannot be confirmed, in 2025, more than ten years after the adoption of the censured provision and in the context of a completely different regulatory and factual context, deponent, unequivocally, in the sense of the now structural character (in the sense of permanent) of the ceiling.
Secondly, the Court shows that it has fully mastered the financial data. But even in this case, it eschews conformism (this time, austerity). If, in fact, on the one hand, it excludes the retroactivity of the effects of the declaration of unconstitutionality, with the consequent restitution, on the other hand, it is not satisfied either with the intentions declaimed on the occasion of the introduction of the ceiling (in concrete terms downward, with respect to many top positions) - that is, the generic containment of public spending - or with the savings forecast at the time of the entry into force of Article 13, paragraph 1, of DL 24.4.2014, n. 66. Rather, it looks for them, these savings, and finds them, in the officiality of the General State Accounts for 2015, which certify: against the 86 mln budgeted, only 4.5 actually achieved. 5%, with peaks, in subsequent years, of less than 25%.
Finally, the judgment takes the reported financial data as an opportunity for a lesson in sound common sense, in the face of what in recent years the 'ceiling' has come to distortingly represent in the public administration, namely only an operation of indiscriminate levelling on the maximum limit of 240,000 euro gross: therefore, regardless of the type of work, training course, level of qualification, and, even from this point of view on an individual basis, the extent of responsibilities.
In objectifying, with the force of crude algebra, the abnormal distance between the expected savings and those actually achieved, the Court cannot refrain from making an acute, almost sociological remark, observing that such a savings trend line 'could also support the hypothesis that the highest-paid civil servants have preferred to give up additional duties rather than suffer the effects of the salary cap, with the consequence of dispersing the contribution of high professionalism, but without making appreciable savings'.
