TIRANA, Feb. 25 – Hundreds of trials all over the country’s courts were suspended this week as lawyers staged a three-day strike over a new tax hike boycotting all sessions. The new strike comes after lawyers all over the country first boycotted court sessions on Feb. 8 demanding a review of the new reference wages.
New legal changes have set reference wages on lawyers and several other self-employed professionals such as notaries public, doctors, dentists and engineers increasing monthly social security and health insurance contributions by up to 3-fold. Maks Haxhia, the head of the National Bar Association, says lawyers have filed a complaint with the country’s Constitutional Court, demanding the cancellation of the new legal changes which entered into force in Feb. 2015 as discriminating against young lawyers and damaging free competition.
“This decision is discriminating against young lawyers. No study has been made on how much they win and have to pay,” said Haxhia.
According to him, the boycott could last up to six months as happened in Serbia where the Bar Association staged strikes until their demands were met. Albania has some 12,000 lawyers, a considerable number of whom are newly graduated and cannot afford to pay the new rates.
Under a decision made on Jan. 21, the Albanian government set monthly reference wages ranging from 40,250 lek (€288) to 88,800 lek (€636) for seld-employed professionals based on the type of profession and the area where they operate in the newly established 61 municipalities under the territorial reform.
Monthly reference wages for Tirana lawyers have been set at 73,800 lek (€527), compared to starting from a minimum of 19,400 lek (€138), increasing monthly contributions by three times.
Social security contributions currently stand at 24.5 percent compared to 3.4 percent for health insurance contributions.
