Brussels, 03/09/2007 (Agence Europe) - A study carried out by Professor Roger Blanpain (KUL, Catholic University of Leuven) at the request of the European officials' union (CONF-SFE) on the way the European Union employs its contract agents has put the cat among the pigeons. Prof. Blanpain accuses the European Commission of discrimination and of acting in direct contradiction of the basic principles of European social law. The grounds for this accusation are that the Commission pays its contract agents less than its statutory civil servants for the same work: remuneration is generally between 30 and 50% lower that that of permanent civil servants, Prof. Blanpain says in his report. “This goes completely against the general principles of European labour law and European social law,” Prof. Blanpain told journalists in Brussels on Friday, indicating that he felt that the principle of “equal pay for equal work” had to be adhered to.
These comments provoked the ire of Valérie Rampi”, the spokeswoman for Administration Commissioner Siim Kalas. “The CONF-SFE has just received Professor Blanpain's report. It has not yet had time to study the said report in detail. Once this has been done, and once it has consulted its own legal services, the union will arrange a meeting with Commissioner Kallas to present the report to him. To date, the Commission has not received a copy of the report!” Ms Rampi said. The framework agreement (mentioned in various dailies) on fixed-term work, signed by the social partners in 1999, applies to member states, not to the European institutions, Ms Rampi noted, adding that the framework agreement signed by the Commission and its unions came under the social chapter of the Treaty. With regard to conditions of employment, the Commission applied the general rules of the Staff Regulations which came into effect on 1 May 2004, she said. This was a major reform of the rules as they had previously stood, creating a regime for contract agents (who replaced auxiliaries), which improved their working conditions by bringing them EC social security and pensions system cover, Ms Rampi went on. She also pointed out that there were two categories of contract agent: long-term agents (such as Commission drivers and ushers) whose fixed term contract could be converted to an open-ended contract and those who could not be employed for more than three years. She pointed out that “contract agents' salaries are lower than those of permanent staff quite simply because their work is more limited”. Ms Rampi noted that 15% of the Commission's total staff were contract agents, 5,500 belonging to the first category and some 3,900 to the category where the term of employment could not exceed three years. (gb)