International

The week to come will see a strike at the EU institutions in Brussels. Officials are calling for a 3.7% pay increase instead of the 1.8% agreed by the member states in December. According to the rules they should indeed have had 3.7%, so formally they are in the right, but you have to ask yourself where their feeling of solidarity has got to, solidarity with all those people who have been badly affected by the crisis.

Just a few minutes ago it was announced on the news that many self-employed people are being forced to call on charitable food banks for assistance, unable to make ends meet as a result of the crisis. In addition, the numbers unemployed are growing and wages and social assistance payments are under pressure throughout Europe.

This sort of announcement doesn't appear to reach Brussels. Here, we are mostly messing around with a complete non-problem: in the last few weeks my inbox has been flooded out with e-mails in which the EU officials' unions announced their intention to strike next week. Usually I see strikes as being conducted by people for whom this is the only option, because they face the threat of being trampled under foot. Yet here we are talking about employees earning at least €2,300 and as much as €16,000 per month! EU officials take home an average of twice the salaries earned by officials in the member states.

The fuss has been provoked by the long-standing agreement to adjust EU officials' salaries according to a complicated calculation model which takes into account inflation and the wage increases awarded to officials in the various member states. This doesn't seem unreasonable, but if you're starting from a point twice as high as those officials' salaries, then every percentage point represents, in practice, twice as much actual money. If a national civil servant earns €2,000 a month and he or she is given a 3.7% pay rise, this translates into an extra €74. His or her colleague in Brussels, however, receives 3.7% of a salary twice as great, and so the increase is worth €148. The differential thus grows ever greater.

The SP has long argued that EU salaries should be reduced. National civil servants now do a great deal of 'European' work and many of the differences which were perhaps there earlier have for some time no longer been evident. So I find the member states' decision totally reasonable. We should at least begin to ensure that salary increases no longer serve to widen the gap. In time salaries in Brussels and in the member states would become a little closer, and that would be no bad thing.

Still, you might expect EU officials to do this sort of sum for themselves, that they read newspapers and are conscious of the persistent reports of growing poverty in Europe. Obviously they prefer to read holiday brochures, or ads from estate agents and luxury car dealers. But I'd like to call on any officials who have a bit of feeling for social solidarity to come out on a strike for a better purpose than self-enrichment, to fight for example for the homeless of this city. For once, come out of your nice warm meeting rooms and find out what real life, life on the streets, is like. If the parliament's activities were to be disrupted by such a strike, you won't hear me complain. I'll be shoulder-to-shoulder with the strikers.