Olekas proposes raising judges’ service age limit to 70

Lithuanian Parliament Speaker Juozas Olekas has proposed extending the age limit for judges by five years, from 65 to 70, LRT reported.

Olekas has registered amendments to the Law on Courts, saying they would help retain judges with extensive professional experience. If approved, a judge’s powers would end when they turn 70 or when their fixed-term appointment expires.

The 70-year limit would also apply to judges appointed before the amendments take effect, provided their terms have not yet ended. The changes would not restore powers that had already expired before the law came into force.

Olekas said the proposal would help preserve the number of judges, support an orderly generational transition and reflect the principles of the so-called silver economy.

“Professional maturity, accumulated legal experience, the ability to manage complex cases and pass knowledge on to younger colleagues are a public resource built up over many years,” Olekas said in the explanatory note. He added that, provided they remain medically fit and professionally suitable, older judges could complete long-running cases, share specialised knowledge and contribute to the professional development of younger judges.

Olekas said the current 65-year limit deprives the court system of judges who have accumulated substantial professional experience. He argued that training, selecting and developing judges takes many years, while their relatively early departure can contribute to staff shortages, heavier workloads and longer case-processing times.

Rather than allowing individual and selective extensions, Olekas proposed a uniform age limit of 70 set in advance by law for all judges. He said this approach reflected Constitutional Court case law on judicial independence and the inadmissibility of deciding individually whose powers should be extended after a general limit has expired.

According to the explanatory note, a 70-year retirement age for judges is also in place in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. Spain has a limit of 72. In Germany, the general limit for federal judges is gradually being raised to 67, while judges in Estonia may serve until 67, with extensions possible in cases set out by law.

The amendments are proposed to take effect on January 1, 2027.