Reconsidering severance pay

The General Council of the Judiciary was due on Monday to answer the application made by its former president and chief justice of the Supreme Court, Carlos Dívar, who considers himself entitled to compensation for leaving the presidency of these two bodies after heading them for more than two years.

After the scandal caused by his long, luxurious “Caribbean weekends” at public expense, Dívar is in the news again, although his request for compensation is based on legal arguments. Under the norms applicable since 1980 to persons holding top official posts (complemented with later regulations), the resignation of members of the government, Congress and Senate speakers, and heads of high courts (among other posts) entails a right to go on receiving 80 percent of the remuneration they received during 24 months.

In the case of Dívar, this severance pay amounts to 208,000 euros, that is, 8,666 euros gross per month. The news has caused indignation in associations of judges, judiciary civil service unions, and some political parties — UPyD and IU — who term this perquisite shameful and scandalous, coming as it does amid demands for austerity and record numbers of unemployed. Should the Council give him satisfaction, it will first have to find the money: something more than 43,000 euros to pay to Dívar during the remainder of this year, and 108,000 in the next, at public expense, of course.

Quite apart from the judiciary, the norms in question have been very costly to the Spanish public coffers. Every time a replacement happens in one of the posts that have a right to this, taxpayers have to pay the new office-holder’s salary, plus 80 percent of the outgoing one’s during two years.

Such compensation has often been paid to persons who have other income, public or private, although this compatibility has ceased to exist under a decree issued by the government in mid-July — which will affect persons in the Zapatero administration. Deputies and senators who have held a seat for more than two years, who also receive compensation on leaving office, starting in September will have to choose between this ex-parliamentary pay and salaries or pensions of other types. The boards of both Chambers have vetoed the receipt of simultaneous payment.

The economic and financial crisis has intensified criticism of the manner in which public functions are exercised, and raised a groundswell against the costs involved in salaries paid to top officials. We must resist the populist impulse to deny fair retribution to a person who serves the state in a highly responsible position.

But it is time to revise other classes of expenditure which, if they made sense at a time when Spanish democracy was setting out on its road, have now become something in the nature of prebends and privileges. Especially when compensation paid to the former office-holder are in no way conditional upon good performance while in office.