The gorging in the bottomless trough known as Brussels has been properly exposed by Open Europe in their latest report. Firstly they have revealed that the basic salary of a Commissioner is €230,000 (£207,000), although most earn more.
On top of the ongoing salary, they also get substantial annual 'entertainment' allowances (minimum €7000) and a rather mean €35,000 "Residency Allowance" (i.e. second home).
However, it's not until they retire that Commissioners really reap the benefits. You may recall the fuss recently over Peter Mandelson's "retirement" package when he moved to the Labour front bench as a minister (on a new hefty salary). Mandy received (as a minimum) a €19,000 resettlement fund, even thought he had already been paid a large residency allowance during his term, and €286,000 per year for the next three years.
Are we really getting value for money from these unelected bureaucrats? Even our own Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, earns less, on £187,000 and gets a lot more public scrutiny and criticism into the bargain.
Isn't it time we had MEPs in Brussels fighting for less extravagance and better value for money?
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4 comments:
Here's a challenge then: how much do you think commissioners should be paid and why? €100,000? €150,000?, €200,000?
And when are we going to hear Libertas' party policy on this?
Personally I think that they should be on the same pay scale as civil servants in the UK (for UK Commissioners)... but I also think that some top civil servants here are overpaid too.
Looking at the 2007 report from the Review Body on Senior Salaries (http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm70/7030/7030.pdf) Permanent Secretaries get paid up to £273,250. (page v) - not a million miles away from the £207,000 quoted basic.
Setting aside the argument that Commissioners are politicians, not civil servants, you must agree that someone like the EU Trade Commissioner or Competition Commissioner has a more important job that any UK Permanent Secretary?
Your also seem to be suggesting that Commissioners should be paid different amounts depending on their nationality? Surely that's an extraordinary comment to make from a party that makes such a big deal out of being "pan-European". How do you justify that?
I had no idea that permanent secretaries were so well paid. I strongly disagree with them being paid more than the Prime Minister. That's just ridiculous. The same goes for Commissioners, in my opinion.
We have discussed the issue of whether Commissioners are Politicians before :-) They aren't elected, so they aren't proper politicians as far as I am concerned, and certainly have no elected mandate.
I am only commenting for myself and off the top of my head, not pushing Libertas official policy - I am pretty certain that there isn't one on salaries yet. As far as I know, MEPs are only just having their salaries equalised, and until now have been paid on a national basis (is that correct?).
As for the pan-European issue - that doesn't mean that we are in favour of harmonising everything. In fact one important aspect of Libertas is the desire to allow nations and cultures to thrive without being consumed by a centralised homogeneous faux euro-culture.
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