By Martin Banks - 27th July 2010
The EU is increasing the number of 'thoroughbred' officials
Inge Grassle
A senior MEP has slammed the soaring salaries paid to top EU officials.
The attack by EPP deputy Inge Grassle comes after it emerged that the commission had approved three new director general posts.
It takes the number of people employed in DG posts in the executive to 100.
Directors-general are among the top officials employed in the commission and it is estimated that each receives a monthly basic salary of €15,000 to €18,000.
Grassle, her party's spokesman on parliament's budgetary control committee, accused the commission of a "remarkable lack of insight" in approving the new posts.
She suggests that the order was deliberately approved by the college of commissioners in the executive's final working week before the summer recess so as to avoid it being spotted by MEPs, the press and the public.
She is particularly incensed that the number of DG posts now exceeds what she says is the commission's own target of 87, and drew a comparison between the number of DGs employed by the commission and in her own country.
"The counterparts of the commission's directors-general in the German federal government receive a basic pay of around €11,300 per month and only count 27," said the MEP.
Grassle likened the commission to a "self-service shop" and said the latest appointments demonstrate "a display of a remarkable shortage of insight" in the face of austerity budgets in many member states.
She added that the commission's administrative apparatus is becoming "more and more" complicated to monitor "since the constant separation or creation of directorates-general and the systematic establishment of deputy directors-general is not a transparent process".
She said, "It leads to a myriad of smaller sub-divisions which increase bureaucracy and generate an ever-growing administration.
"Furthermore, the commission is shifting its administrative workload on to agencies and other external service providers.
"The tendency towards creating new top posts applies evenly to all senior management."
She said that since 2007, the number of DG posts has increased by 16 and those of directors by 41 (basic salary is €13,000 to €16,600 per month).
Grassle says this "again" overtakes the commission's self-defined target of 313 posts for directors by 25.
She says "practically every" DG has one or two deputies, "notwithstanding the fact that there had been a working system for years".
The German deputy said, "While member states are cutting down their budgets and slashing posts - roughly 10,000 have gone in the German federal administration alone - the EU is increasing the number of 'thoroughbred' officials."
Further comment came from UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom, who said, "This is further evidence that the Eurocrats live in a different solar system to the rest of us. The taxpayer lives on the planet 'austerity', the Eurocrat circles on one of the moons of the great gas giant, 'waste'."
No-one from the commission was immediately available for comment.
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