European Union bureaucrats on Monday downed their pens and laptops in protest as they went on strike at member states' plans to block a proposed 3.7-per-cent pay rise. The inflation-busting rise has infuriated EU states whose public finances have been ravaged by the world economic crisis. But EU officials argue that it would be illegal to deny them their rise under the bloc's complex remuneration rules.
"It's not a very suitable moment for us to get a 3.7-per-cent rise, but that is the way (salaries) are done," said Massimo Mauro, union leader in the council of EU member states, which plans and organises EU ministerial meetings. "Last year we only got 0.6 per cent, and in 2010 we expect only a very meagre rise, or even a pay cut," he said. EU officials in the council and the European Commission, the bloc's executive, are paid from the EU's central budget, which is funded by taxpayers in the bloc's 27 member states. Since 2004, their pay has been calculated according to civil servants' salaries in eight of the EU's richest and oldest member states in the preceding year.
Ironically, that system was put in place because EU member states feared that the Eurocrats would receive massive pay rises if their salaries were based on those of civil servants in all 27 members, including the fast-growing economies of Central and Eastern Europe. In November, the commission proposed a 3.7-per-cent rise, based on the calculation of national salaries in 2008.