Strike threat as pay rises for EU staff are blocked

Fifteen national governments are blocking a European Commission proposal to increase the pay, pensions and allowances of EU civil servants by 3.7%.

The move has provoked threats of strike action from the EU's staff unions, which have urged the Commission to take the national governments to court.

The national governments' deputy ambassadors to the EU discussed the increase at a meeting in Brussels yesterday (2 December), but failed to reach an agreement. They will discuss the issue again next Wednesday (9 December).

The 15 countries that are opposed to the increase include the UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands and six countries that joined the EU in 2004. They argue that the increase is unreasonable when national civil servants are having their pay frozen or cut.

The Latvian government has cut public-sector pay by up to 25% and in Ireland a quarter of a million public-sector employees went on strike last week in protest at plans to cut €1.3 billion from the wages bill of the public sector.

The Commission made its proposal on the basis of a formula governing EU staff pay, calculated from the salaries of civil servants in eight EU member states combined with a cost of living allowance for Brussels in the period July 2008 to June 2009. The pay-award would be back-dated to July 2009. The eight reference countries are the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

A spokeswoman for Siim Kallas, the European commissioner for personnel, who made the proposal, said that the method of calculation was “fair” and meant that officials “shared the gain and the pain”. She said that the purchasing power of EU officials had fallen by 1.7% from 2004 to 2009.

Alan Hick, a representative of Union Syndicale at the European Economic and Social Committee, said that the use of the formula was an “honest bargain which has given us social peace for 20 years”. He said the calculation was part of the staff regulation agreed by the Council of Ministers and was therefore “obligatory” and the Council did not have to right to ignore it. He said that the formula would probably lead to a pay-cut next year.

The legal service at the Council secretariat has advised member states that departing from the formula would be vulnerable to a legal challenge. The Council has limited grounds for rejecting the Commission's proposal. An article in the staff regulations says that if there is a “serious and sudden deterioration in the economic and social situation” in the EU, the Commission can submit a revised proposal accompanied by “objective data”.

Francesco Ianniello of the Renouveau et Démocratie staff union, said that if the Council refused to agree to the proposed increase, the Commission should take the Council to the European Court of Justice for failing to respect the pay formula. Hick, too, said that the Council should be taken to the European Court of Justice if it blocked the award.

But it is the Commission, not the staff unions, which would have to mount the legal challenge. European Commissioner Sicco Mansholt challenged a Council decision in 1972 for failing to honour its obligations to EU staff during the oil crisis.