Brussels, 11/01/2012 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has decided, on Wednesday 11 January, to take the EU Council of Ministers to the Court of Justice for failing to adopt the regulation that provides for a 1.7% increase in 2011 in the salaries and pensions of EU officials. The Commission is thus providing a most forceful response to the Council's decision at the end of December not to act on the Commission proposal for the increase in EU staff salaries. The Council, too, referred the matter to the Court of Justice over the refusal by the Commission to invoke Article 10 of Appendix XI of staff regulations, which relates to the exception clause. The Article allows the Commission to recommend that, because of exceptional circumstances, the Council should not abide by the usual method of calculation of salary adjustments.
Under the staff regulations, salaries and pensions of EU officials are adjusted according to political decisions taken by member states on the salaries of their own, national civil servants. Thus, when salaries of national officials increase or decrease, the same change is applied to EU staff.
This year, five of the eight member states used in the calculation increased salaries of their national officials in nominal terms: Belgium (3.6%), France and the Netherlands (2%), Germany and the United Kingdom (1.3%). There were small salary decreases in Italy, Spain and Luxembourg. On average, this meant that national officials lost 1.8% of their purchasing power in real terms. “Exactly the same loss is proposed for EU officials, wherever they are based”, the Commission points out.
The Commission, therefore, “in strict compliance with the law”, proposed to the Council that this same loss be applied to EU officials. The Commission proposal called also for a -1.8% cut in real terms which, for staff in Brussels where inflation is 3.6%, translates into a nominal adjustment of 1.7%.
As the European Court of Justice has already confirmed several times (the last time on 24 November 2010 in Case C-40/10), under the staff regulations, the Council has no room for manoeuvre, but must adopt the adjustment value calculated by the Commission, the European executive says.
Departure from these rules is possible only by using the exception clause which, as the Court has stated, can only be used in genuinely exceptional circumstances where the method does not allow the remuneration of officials to be adjusted quickly enough. At the request of the Council, the Commission twice examined whether the exception clause could be invoked. It concluded that the loss of purchasing power of EU staff, which corresponds to the loss of purchasing power of national officials, appears to be in line with the current economic and social situation. Any additional measures which go beyond that loss “would be in breach of the staff regulations and the case law of the Court of Justice” in the Commission's view.
The Commission argues that it has taken into account the need for austerity by proposing staff cuts in all EU institutions of 5% as well as major changes to the staff regulations, such as increasing weekly working time from 37.5 to 40 hours without compensation, postponing the retirement age to 65 (or 67 under certain circumstances), and reshaping career structures for secretaries and assistants. If adopted, these measures will result in over €1 billion of savings over the next seven years and €1 billion per year in the long run.
Despite the above considerations, the Council took a formal decision not to adopt the Commission proposal. The Commission considers that this decision breaches the staff regulations and believes that, as guardian of the Treaties, is must challenge this decision in the Court of Justice of the EU.
Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said: “The Commission regrets that it is again, after a similar situation in 2009, obliged to take the Council to court on this matter. The Council and the Commission both recognise the need for savings in administrative costs. However, such savings have to be made in compliance with the law and if necessary by changing the law, not by breaking it”. He felt that it is the approach the Commission has been working on for eight months, which resulted in formal proposals in December 2011 to the European Parliament and the Council which “would create savings in administrative expenditure of more than €1 billion by 2020, and €1 billion per year in the long term, if adopted”.
The annual adjustment is calculated every year by Eurostat on the basis of statistical data provided by the member states on salary increases or decreases they have awarded to their national civil services. In 2004 the Council decided that a sample consisting of eight member states (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) should be used. In 2010 there was a small cut in net salaries in the EU institutions, since increases in the pension contribution rate (from 11.3% to 11.6%) and in the special levy (from 5.07% to 5.5%) outweighed the minimal increase in gross salaries (0.1%). (LC/transl.rt)