By Martin Banks - 14th December 2009
EU bureaucrats in Brussels are living on another planet
Lorraine Mullally
A furious row has flared over the decision of thousands of EU staff to stage a strike on Monday.
Employees in the European council held a four-hour stoppage in a bid to put pressure on member states to honour an agreed 3.7 per cent pay increase.
The strike coincides with the start of a meeting in the same council building of EU agriculture ministers.
Some member states are refusing to honour a seven-year-old deal that ties the salaries of EU staff to public sector pay over the previous year in several member states.
Open Europe, a UK-based think tank, criticised the decision to strike.
Lorraine Mullally, its spokesperson, said, "“EU bureaucrats in Brussels are living on another planet. Why should they get an inflation-busting pay rise while back in the real world public sector workers face pay cuts? EU officials are already very well paid.
"In the middle of a recession, the last thing taxpayers need is EU bureaucrats demanding bigger salaries. How out of touch can you get?”
But Wolfgang Entmayr, political secretary of Conf-SFE trade union, which represents 1,500 commission staff who have backed their colleagues' strike action, countered the criticism.
Staff in both the commission and parliament may themselves take strike action unless the matter is resolved.
Commission president José Manuel Barroso is backing the staff claim, saying, "It is a legal text and we have to respect the law."
Entmayr told this website, "It has to be underlined that it is not a 'pay rise' we are asking for but an application of the so-called 'method', an instrument the council has decided to be applicable as from 2002.
"In other words, we just want the EU-law to be applied. The 3.7 per cent is a salary adaptation which follows the rise in pay of civil servants in eight member states and takes into account the change in the Brussels international index - not more and not less.
"It is completely false to say that we 'demand an inflation-busting pay rise'. What we demand is that the proposal of the commission, one based on a law decided by the council and having an effect on employees of the EU institutions, should be decided upon by the council.
"If the council itself is not abiding by its own laws, how can the EU ask other parties in Europe to abide by EU law?
"Out of political expediency, member states are now reticent to decide on the commission proposal. But they were not reticent to agree to similar or even much higher pay rises for their own civil servants in the last two years."
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