Bid to end pay gap gains support

Date: 10/04/1997

By Rory Watson

THE European Parliament appears to be winning support among EU leaders for the creation of a single statute for all 626 MEPs to end the current anomalies in members' salaries.

Governments are being asked to write a new provision into the revised Maastricht Treaty which would clear the way for MEPs to draw up a statute ensuring they are all treated equally from 1999.

The initiative is part of wider parliamentary efforts to clamp down on abuses of the members' travel and residence allowances.

Currently, MEPs receive the same salary as their national counterparts and with Spanish and Greek MEPs, for instance, getting only a quarter of the income of their Italian colleagues, it is tacitly accepted that the daily allowances help bridge the gap.

“We cannot clean up the present system while there are so many different levels of pay,” explained one senior MEP.

Parliament President José María Gil-Robles has already raised the idea with several government leaders and appears to be gaining support for the concept.

Even French President Jacques Chirac sees merits in the scheme, despite his angry condemnation of the Parliament's recent criticism of his country's immigration laws.

“I noted with satisfaction your agreement in principle on the single statute for European parliamentarians, which would have the merit of bringing order and clarity to a situation which has become very difficult because of the coexistence of 15 different national systems - a problem which can only become more acute with enlargement,”

Gil-Robles wrote to Chirac after their meeting last month.

The move to use the current Intergovernmental Conference on treaty reform to solve a problem which has lain unresolved since the first direct elections in 1979 draws on an earlier precedent. The Maastricht Treaty endorsed the concept of creating an EU ombudsman and then left it to the Parliament to make the appointment and agree the general rules and conditions of office.

Some, however, may not consider that a particularly encouraging comparison, since it took MEPs several years and a number of false starts before they managed to agree on who should fill the post.

“In many ways we have effectively got a statute, but that it is not the case for salaries. We are not saying that everyone should be brought up to the highest level. It would be reasonable, however, to ensure that members had incomes at least equivalent to those of UK MEPs, which are a little above the average,” suggested one MEP.

Another possible way to achieve the same result - and so weaken the arguments of those claiming that the present travel and per diem arrangements are necessary to bridge the income gap - would be to pay a Brussels allowance to members at the lower end of the salary scale.

The various formulae are designed to introduce a greater degree of equality between MEPs' salaries. But before they can become reality, the Parliament will have to overcome inbuilt opposition from many EU governments which have so far refused to break the salary parity between Euro MPs and national politicians, and do not believe the former should be better paid than the latter.

The ideas are currently being examined by a working group of senior MEPs under the leadership of French Socialist member and Parliament Vice-President Nicole Pery.

Established earlier this year after widespread criticism of the Parliament's expenses system, the group is also considering ways to tighten up the rules on members' travel and accommodation allowances.

Its recommendations are expected to emerge shortly after the Amsterdam European summit in mid-June.