ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court announced on Sunday that a lawsuit has been filed by civil servants from the Kurdistan Region, demanding uninterrupted funding of their salaries as per a previous ruling of the court, amid tensions between Erbil and Baghdad over the Region’s budget share.

In a letter addressed to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) last week, Iraqi Finance Minister Taif Sami said that they are “unable to continue funding the Region,” arguing that the Region has exceeded its 12.67 percent share of the annual budget, totaling 13.5 trillion dinars.

Sami claimed that from 2023 until April 2025, the Kurdistan Region had handed over only 598.5 billion dinars out of its total combined oil and non-oil revenues of 19.9 trillion dinars.

The Iraqi top court revealed in a statement seen by The New Region that “a lawsuit was filed by employees from the Kurdistan Region demanding the continued disbursement of salaries in the Kurdistan Region on its specified dates.”

“They requested the issuance of a provisional order obligating the federal Ministry of Finance to pay salaries in implementation of this court's aforementioned decision,” the statement read, referring to a February ruling by the Federal Supreme Court which obliged the two government to nationalize the Region’s salaries.

Civil servants in the Kurdistan Region have borne the brunt of a long-standing budgetary conflict between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Economic sanctions and pressure on Erbil by federal authorities have forced employees in the Region to live from paycheck to paycheck.

Baghdad’s decision to suspend funding the Kurdistan Region’s civil servant salaries prompted a meeting between over 40 political parties in the Region on Saturday upon an invitation by the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), where they unanimously criticized the federal government’s move as “political”.

“This meeting represents an important step toward unifying Kurdish visions and positions and strengthening Kurdish coordination,” said Barzani Headquarters spokesperson Khalida Khalil on Sunday, reiterating that “the problem is not legal, but political. Baghdad's admissions prove that the Region has fulfilled all its obligations, especially the lists they requested, which were submitted without any comments.”

In a statement on Sunday, Iraq’s liberal National Line Movement expressed its “deep concern over the continued deprivation of Kurdistan Region citizens from their natural and constitutional right to receive their monthly salaries.”

The movement noted that Baghdad’s decision is not related to the federal budget tables, but rather “unjustified anxiety” over the KRG’s recently-signed energy deals with American firms.