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(2004/C 65 E/093)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-1508/03

by Gabriele Stauner (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(28 April 2003)

Subject:   Budget item A-1090 — extra income for Commissioners

Members of the Commission have for years been receiving extra income by having part of their salary transferred not to bank accounts in their place of employment, Brussels, but to accounts in other EU countries, with weightings being applied to the amounts transferred. One of the points which the Commission has made in justification of this (see reply to Written Question P-1805/02 (1)) is that the Council and Parliament have made the requisite appropriations for such transfers available in the budget each year and have expressly provided for them in the relevant budget remarks.

Until the 2002 financial year, the budget item concerned (A-1090 — Adjustments to emoluments/Weightings) contained the following remark: ‘This appropriation ... covers the cost of weightings applied to the part of emoluments transferred to a country other than the country of employment’. The Commission again proposed this remark in its Preliminary Draft Budget for 2003. The Council deleted it at first reading. Parliament upheld this deletion.

What conclusion does the Commission draw from the decision of the budgetary authority to delete this remark?

Does the Commission consider that its Members can nonetheless still continue to take advantage of weightings if they have part of their salary transferred to a country other than that where they are employed?

In this context, what conclusion does the Commission draw from the fact that the relevant regulation concerning the salaries of Members of the Commission also does not provide for the possibility of such transfers of salary with the application of a weighting and indeed makes no mention whatsoever of the subject?

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(23 June 2003)

As the Honourable Member will know from previous answers, the weighted transfer arrangements to which she refers have always applied to Members of the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors as well as Members of the Commission. The legality of the system has, as the Honourable Member knows, been reaffirmed by the Court of Justice in an administrative decision. As the Honourable Member is aware, Members of the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors consequently resumed use of the system. The Commission's decision of June 2002 to suspend the use of the weighted transfer system is still in force.

When the Council decided to delete the remark referred to in the Honourable Member's question, the facts that the Commission had not been consulted or informed, and no explanation had been provided in the Explanatory Memorandum, prompted the Director General for Budget to indicate to the President of the Council's Budget Committee on 7 May 2002 that, the Commission considered the procedure to be ‘not normal’. It is clear, however, that the remark on the budget item in question had no effect on the legality of the matter, and the deletion of the remark had no effect on it either, as is evident from the fact that the credit (similar to that for previous years) was maintained.

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(1)OJ C 309 E, 12.12.2002, p. 164.

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