Underworked and overpaid

  • 2011-03-09
  • From wire reports

RIGA - European Union (EU) officials receive huge salaries, enticing white-collar residents from Eastern Europe rushing to find jobs at EU institutions in Brussels, says a feature story in the The International Herald Tribune, reports news agency LETA. In the article, the salaries of Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (Unity) and EU officials from Latvia are compared.

“As prime minister of Latvia, Valdis Dombrovskis has one of the worst jobs in politics, presiding over a fall in living standards in his impoverished country as he slashes salaries and cuts jobs to try to strengthen the nation’s depleted finances,” the newspaper points out. “For this, he gets a pretax annual salary of 32,640 euros. He pays his own health insurance and lives in a three-room, Soviet-built apartment.”

The newspaper points out that while Dombrovskis earns less than many police officers walking beats in Western Europe, other Latvian officials based in Brussels do not do so badly. “Take Andris Piebalgs. As Latvia’s member of the European Commission, he earns 248,006 euros a year, seven times as much as the prime minister who re-nominated him to his Brussels post,” the article says.

The article also points out that Egils Levits, Latvia’s judge at the European Court of Justice, another EU institution, gets the same amount as Piebalgs which, accounting for the currency exchange rate, means he earns well over 100,000 dollars more than the Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts, Jr.

“For Mr. Piebalgs and Mr. Levits, the benefits aren’t bad, either: a housing and living allowance, an annual stipend of 4,380 euros per dependent child, around 7,300 euros a year for entertainment, and a generous pension with no employee contribution,” the article goes on to say, adding that “Professional interests and talents aside, it is easy to see why there has been a white-collar gold rush from struggling East European countries to employment opportunities with the EU.”

The International Herald Tribune points out that nearly 150 Latvians work for the European Commission as administrators and, thereby, earn at least 50 percent more than Dombrovskis. According to Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice president responsible for administration and salaries, the pay is appropriate for international jobs, where top officials have to run households in two countries. “If you look at what are our salaries, the commission is definitely not higher paying than the International Monetary Fund or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,” he said.
Such salaries are expected to attract “high-quality commissioners who are totally independent,” he added. “They restrict what they can do now and what they can do after their duties [are over].”

Dombrovskis, 39, who in 2009 gave up his seat in the European Parliament, where he was earning three times as much as he is now, is more philosophical about the matter. “Everything is relative,” he said of his salary. “It is less than in the European Parliament or what other prime ministers earn, but to put this in a Latvian context, it’s not so small, even though, in nominal terms, I earn less now than in 2003, when I was finance minister.”

His wife works, and last year he finally got rid of his 12-year-old Saab 93, though its replacement, a Toyota RAV4, is itself more than two years old,” says the article. “Then again, it might be smart for him not to look around too much. Mr. Piebalgs, the Latvian member of the European Commission, who earns seven times as much as him, has a smart new home in Jurmala, an upscale town on the Baltic Sea. He declined to be interviewed,” ends the article.