The Commission held a Press Conference on 4th October 2010 where it announced the official lowering of our salaries by 0.4% for Brussels (it also announced a reduction of  around 5% for Ispra in Italy and of 12% for Latvia). R&D‘s figures, taking account notably of the “Special Levy” are even more unfavourable for our colleagues.

The Commission indicated that, applying of the Method resulting from th eKinnock Reform, our salries will decrease by 0.4% (this figure is the result of a reduction in the average salaries of officials in Europe, and a complex formula linked to the cost of living, whichfor this exercise again, is less than real inflation in Belgium.)

To this nominal reduction, one should add, that the international index for Brussels referred to above, shows an inflation rate of 2.4%, leading to an official reduction in our purchasing power of 2.8%. R&D‘s figures are unfortunately worse…

The Commission indicated that since the Kinnock Reform of 2004, we have lost 6% of our purchasinf power (between 2004 & 2010) – once more, their figures, not ours.

Insofar as the attractive nature of our salaries is concerned, which was one of the journalists’ questions, the Commission replied that at the last Competition, for 51,000 candidates, only 1.5 per cent were of UK nationality. The loss in terms of attraction is particularly important for the Nordic countries and the UK.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/468&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en