MEPs reject statute for assistants

By Martin Banks

Date: 30/06/05

MEPs will next week put the finishing touches to rules covering the employment of their assistants.

A Parliamentary working group will meet during the Strasbourg plenary to finalise a 12-page text setting out basic working rights for the assembly's estimated 1,500 assistants.

But calls for a fully fledged statute for assistants - similar to the one MEPs have just voted for themselves - appear to have been dashed.

At last week's mini-plenary in Brussels, an amendment by Dutch Socialist MEP Edith Mastenbroek calling for an assistants' statute was narrowly defeated by 13 votes.

Mastenbroek is a member of the Campaign for Parliament Reform group, which has been pressing for an assistants' statute to be introduced by 2009, when the proposed new statute for MEPs will apply.

The working group's chairman, French Green MEP, Gérard Onesta, said: "It is essentially a new set of rules we will be suggesting but it doesn't really take the form of a statute. "However, I believe our proposals will provide for a clearer, efficient and more transparent system."

Onesta's group has spent the last ten months negotiating new rules for assistants, who, like MEPs, are currently paid and taxed differently.

He said the group was expected to recommend next week that assistants receive a minimum wage, although it does not specify a figure. At present, some assistants are thought to be paid less than €200 per month while others receive a monthly salary of up to €5,000.

The group will also make proposals on up to 30 other issues - ranging from assistants' social security obligations to their right to use the Parliament's nursery facilities - which will then go to the assembly's bureau for approval, possibly at the September plenary. If approved, the new rules would probably come into force by the autumn.

Mastenbroek's assistant, Joeri Hamvas, said many assistants would be disappointed that a fully fledged statute now appeared unlikely.

He said: "The current system is a complete mess and it appears that what is being suggested is a tweak here and there rather than the fundamental changes which are required.

"Under their new statute, MEPs will enjoy harmonised levels of pay and taxation and we believe assistants should be granted the same right in order to eliminate the current massive discrepancies."

Plans for a statute for MEPs are expected to be rubberstamped at the Ecofin Council on 12 July, under the UK presidency of the EU.

Luxembourg, whose proposals were backed by MEPs last week, had hoped to push through the package before the end of its presidency but ran out of time.

Article reports on attempts to standardise basic working rights for the European Parliament's estimated 1,500 assistants.