WRITTEN QUESTION P-1805/02

by Gabriele Stauner (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(19 June 2002)

Subject: Unlawful supplements to Commissioners' salaries

In the answer which he gave on behalf of the Commission to my Written Question P-1233/02(1), Mr Kinnock, Vice-President of the Commission, confirmed that, for many years now, Commissioners have been benefiting from the opportunity to bump up their salaries by having a part thereof transferred not to their bank account in their place of employment, Brussels, but to accounts in other EU countries, which transfers qualify for beneficial weightings. The Commission also confirmed that Regulation No 422/67/EEC of the Council(2), which determines the emoluments of members of the Commission and which is applicable in this instance, includes no provisions which would authorise this practice.

In its defence, the Commission argues that, none the less, Parliament annually makes provision for such transfers by entering the requisite additional appropriations in the budget.

Does not the Commission take the view that it has included misleading data in the draft budgets which it has submitted to Parliament and erroneously given the impression that Article 4a of the relevant Regulation authorises the application of weightings?

In its judgment of 12 May 1998 (Case C-106/96), the European Court of Justice held that payments may be made from the budget only where what is known as a basic act has been adopted which authorises and lays down the conditions for such payments, in other words, that the entry of appropriations in the budget does not, of itself, constitute an adequate condition for payments. Are the Commissioners prepared to repay the supplements to their salaries which they have received since that judgment was handed down?

Can the Commission supply me with a list of the Commissioners who have benefited from such supplements to their salaries and indicate the amount of the additional payments made?

(1) OJ C 277 E, 14.11.2002, p. 162.

(2) OJ 187, 8.8.1967, p. 1 (Special edition, 1967, p. 222).

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(13 September 2002)

The assertion in the Honourable Member's question that weighted transfers were unlawful is wrong and the inference that they were increases of salary is equally erroneous:

The Commission has already explained that the transfers have never been illegal. That continues to be the case. As the Court of Justice confirmed to the Honourable Member on 15 July 2002, the weighted transfer system defined in the Staff Regulations also applies to Members of the Commission, the Court of Auditors and the Court of Justice.

It is not true, either, that weighted transfers are increases of salary. They are a proportion of salary which can be paid in a Member State other than that in which the Members of the Commission or other Institutions work, with the application of a weighting factor which reflects the difference in the cost of living between the place of employment and the place where the Member continues to have to meet financial obligations, despite being required to live at the place of employment. It is therefore an instrument to ensure, within limits, equality of purchasing power between Members of the Commission and other Institutions, wherever they come from.

Because there is a clear analogy with the circumstances of officials, the Council Regulation on Members' remuneration provides for a very similar remuneration structure and is a legal basis for the remuneration. Indeed, successive amendments to the Regulation provide for the salary to be expressed as a percentage of a defined official's salary(1). Moreover, when the Council amended the Staff Regulations to include a method for annual adjustments of officials' salaries, which included a structural reduction, called a temporary contribution, it did exactly the same for the Members of the Institutions, justifying that specifically because of the analogy between the Members and officials(2). The Members' salaries were therefore subject to the same proportional reduction as those of officials, because they were considered to be in substantially the same position. Neither the Council nor the Parliament had any difficulty with this proposal nor with the justification for it. It is therefore difficult to understand why the Honourable Member now seems to think that the same principle does not apply, even though nothing whatever has changed.

As the Honourable Member knows, the same Institutions are the budgetary authority and it is therefore not surprising that, in that capacity, when adopting the budget they onsistently voted for the relevant item whose purpose was clearly and unmistakably identified and the same justification applied. In doing that they were applying the principle of parallelism with officials, which is clearly a part of the Regulation and thus provided a legal basis for the budgetary credits.

The Commission would also point out that the same budgetary authority continued to vote the credits in exactly the same way after the 1998 judgement to which the Honourable Member refers.

The suggestion that the amounts were unlawful and that they should be repaid ignores the plain principle of parallelism in the Regulation. It also implies that the Honourable Member thinks that approval of the budget has no meaning. The Commission is surprised that a Member of the European Parliament, part of the budgetary authority, should take such a view.

It follows from all of the above that the Commission has not misled Parliament since 1998 or before 1998, that the amounts have always been legally paid, that there is no valid reason for them to be repaid, and no justification for listing Commissioners or Members of other Institutions who have made the manifestly legal transfers.

As the Honourable Member has previously been informed, the relevant Institutions will review the weighted transfer issue and examine the question of whether, for clarification, an explicit legal base should be developed to relate specifically to Members of the Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors.

If, as a result of these deliberations, a decision was made to propose a specific legal base the proposal would, of course, have to come from the Council and not from the Commission since the Commission does not make proposals for adapting arrangements relating to the remuneration of its Members or the Members of other Institutions.

(1) See for example Council Regulation (EC, Euratom, ECSC) No 840/95 of 10 April 1995 amending Regulation (EEC, Euratom, ECSC) No 2290/77 determining the emoluments of the members of the Court of Auditors, OJ L 85, 19.4.1995.

(2) Council Regulation (EEC, Euratom, ECSC) No 1084/92 of 28 April 1992 amending Regulation No 422/67/EEC, No 5/67/Euratom determining the emoluments of the President and Members of the Commission, of the President, Judges, Advocates-General and Registrar of the Court of Justice and of the President, Member and Registrar of the Court of First Instance, and Regulation (EEC, Euratom, ECSC) No 2290/77 determining the emoluments of the Members of the Court of Auditors, OJ L 117, 1.5.1992.