Report urges fair pay scale for MEPs’ aides

By Martin Banks

Date: 14/07/05

MEPs' assistants should be paid according to their qualifications and experience and not, as at present, at the whim of the deputy they work for.

This is one of the recommendations of a European Parliament working group set up to look at ways of improving assistants' employment conditions.

Long-awaited proposals for a 'common statute' for MEPs are to be rubberstamped by foreign ministers at their meeting on Monday (18 July).

The Parliament's Assistants Association, which represents 350 of the assembly's assistants, is now stepping up its campaign for a similar statute for MEPs' aides.

Latvian Gundars Romanovskis, the association's acting president, said such a statute was necessary to address huge wage disparities which exist between the Parliament's estimated 2,000 accredited assistants.

"Some are paid at least five times more than others and that is simply not fair," he said.

Romanovskis, an assistant to Latvian Liberal MEP Georgs Andrejevs, has been an observer on the Parliamentary working group, which is chaired by Greens MEP Gérard Onesta.

It is the first major step towards improving the treatment of MEPs' assistants.

The group is likely to recommend the introduction of a sliding pay scale for assistants under which they would be paid according to their experience, qualifications and job description.

Romanovskis said this suggestion, which still has to be approved by the Parliament's bureau, "would be much fairer than the current system".

"I would hope that any such new rules will come into force by 2009 when the new statute for MEPs will apply," he said. "Now that the MEPs' statute has finally been approved, I hope this will give fresh impetus to the long-running campaign for a similar statute for assistants."

But bureau member Ingo Friedrich, a German centre-right MEP, said: "We are willing to consider anything that will improve the current situation but I am not sure a sort of sliding pay scale is the answer, not least because it could be very difficult to implement."

Another bureau member, UK MEP Edward McMillan-Scott, said that while he was in favour of assistants receiving a fair wage and being employed under a proper set of conditions, it was important to point out that "they are not officials of the Parliament nor are they bureaucrats".

"We shall have to consider any proposals when the working group has completed its work," he said.

Some assistants are thought to be paid as little as €700-per-month. MEPs have a monthly €15,000 staff allowance.

A 29-year-old Danish assistant with a gross monthly salary of €5,500 (more than €3,000 net) is one of the highest-paid assistants in the Parliament. He is paid more than MEPs from the new member states and several old member states, including Finland, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

The aide, who works for a Danish MEP, said: "My salary may seem like a lot, particularly for someone from, say, Slovakia or Lithuania, but this is the going rate for the Danish labour market and I think I am worth every cent of what I am paid.

"I work long hours and carry out all sorts of duties for my MEP, including writing most of his speeches."

He commented that it was not fair that some assistants were paid just a few hundred euros. "No one can live in a city like Brussels on that sort of money - I would support anything which might tackle such disparities," he said.

A European Parliament working group set up to look at ways of improving the employment conditions of MEPs' assistants said that they should be paid according to their qualifications and experience and not, as at present, at the discretion of the Parliamentarian they work for.