By Martin Banks - 26th August 2009
It's a topsy-turvy world when an unelected EU official is earning the same as the democratically elected President of the US
Open Europe
A leading UK think tank claims that each of the outgoing EU commissioners stand to receive more than €1.1m in pension payments and so-called 'transitional' and 'resettlement' allowances.
The 20 officials who are expected to leave their posts this autumn will receive a total of €26m in payouts, according to Open Europe, the London-based independent think tank.
Open Europe, which campaigns for reform of the EU, claims that some commissioners are set to receive even bigger settlements when they step down than that paid to Peter Mandelson when the Briton left his post as trade commissioner last year to become the new business secretary in Gordon Brown's government.
The organisation says the commission's Swedish vice president Margot Wallstrom will receive almost €2.05m when she leaves the commission in October and that UK trade commissioner Catherine Ashton will qualify for an "ample" pension of €10,900 a year.
It says this is on top of three years of 'transition' payments, valued at over €101,000 a year and a €20,400 'resettlement' allowance she will receive.
"All of this is in addition to the salaries and perks that commissioners are entitled to during their term of service," said an Open Europe statement.
Commissioners are thought to receive basic salaries of at least €250,000 a year (more for vice-presidents and the president) and Open Europe says that in one five-year term alone a commissioner earns in excess of €1.1m.
It says the €313,000 annual salary paid to commission president Jose Manuel Barroso is "almost exactly equivalent to US President Barack Obama's salary."
The statement says this is in addition to a "host" of other perks, which include residence allowances of 15 per cent of their salary (€45,000) and monthly 'entertainment allowances'.
It goes on, "In total, the team of 27 commissioners has cost the (UK) taxpayer more than €79m, in this five-year term - including salaries, pensions, and the various allowances.
"This does not include other perks that commissioners receive during their service, such as family allowances and subsistence allowances. The pension costs alone amount to more than €37m."
Open Europe analyst Sarah Gaskell said, "Taxpayers around Europe, whose pensions have been swallowed up in the recession, will rightly question why they are footing such an enormous bill for a handful of remote officials who they never voted for in the first place."
"It is a topsy-turvy world when an unelected EU official is earning the same wage as the democratically elected president of the United States."
Gaskell told this website on Wednesday that some commissioners had already responded to the research with Mariann Fischer Boel, commissioner for agriculture and rural development, saying EU commissioners were "worth the money".
She said former commissioner Louis Michel, who was elected an MEP in June, had expressed surprise at the figures, saying commissioners were "well paid for the job they do."
"We used the commission's own data and the figures were not disputed in any way," said Gaskell.
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