Pay starts at €2,500 entry level per month rising to €16,000 a month at grade 16.
Income is taxed at 8% to 45%.A 15% allowance us also paid to an employee when locating outside their home country.
Normal retirement age is 63 and pension is 70% of final renumeration.I believe my figures are correct,but open to correction.

LOL are you for real?????

Yourself and your friends are so flipping out of touch its almost comical.

That indignation! It must be so difficult for you all to be so everywhere misunderstood.

@Aidan OSullivan.when you have finished spluttering in your indignation perhaps you might make a start on correcting the article? In your own time, no pressure.

@Uncle Mort sorry, yes I have calmed now… :)

Firstly, the article uses the classic eurosceptics tactics of pretending unelected people are making these decisions which is not true, and by always focusing on EU civil servants pay&conditions to undermine the whole EU budget, and so undermine the EU.

Dont forget UKIP want the UK to pull out, and due to ignorant media coverage look like getting their way. The other tactic is to pick individual examples of stupid uses of EU funds around Europe, from the 1000s and 1000s of successful programmes. Of course they never mention that the vast majority of EU funds are actually administered by the member states themselves are not the EU direct from Brussels.

The EU totally depends on the member states for a simple reason because it has a tiny civil service (less people than Paris city countil), which even though we give it more and more power via Lisbon Treaty and more member states like Croatia etc, the EU budget is still tiny. Only 1% of EU GDP!!! That compared to the US federal budget which is over 20% of US GDP.

I will add the studidity of EU member states cutting back their budgets all at the same time (at the insistence of the Germans and Commission etc), and then also UK and others insisting EU budget cuts which means even less economic stimulus in regions like Ireland, Spain, Greece etc which need it most.

Of course, nothing wrong with discussing and reforming EU civil servants pay&conditions, and that is happening at moment. But remember, only 16% of EU budget goes on administration (which is very low by international standards), and the vast majority of that goes on translation/interpretation services because states like Ireland insist on 23 languages. However given the context, the EU would be smart to accept reforms and cuts in this area.

By the way, all international organisations like UN, OECD, WHO have same conditions for their civil servants who leave their home state, speak multiple languages, need international schools for their kids and also dont for good reason pay the local income taxes in whatever country the EU insitutions or agency is based. There are good reasons for special arrangemnts, but I agree there should be reforms & cuts here.

So lets take the main point of the article, the so-called extra 11bn to be paid for this years 2013 budget. The author picks up the story from TheJournal which like other media outlets mis-reports the story. This is because most national media outlets get their stories from the national govts and not from the EU Commission or EU parliament. At the moment the Council via the member states is in talks with the Parliament on the EU budget and so this spinning suits the member states.

The 11bn is commitments already legally due by the member states to the EU budget for regional funding programmes, Erasmus, environmental programmes, SMEs funding etc etc. Its not a shortfall or hole in the budget, its legal commitments. For example, the member states legally commit to funding Erasmus for students and based on estimates of the number of students will commit x million. But during the year more students apply than expected for example and so more funds are legally due to pay for them, otherwise 1000s of students would be refused Erasmus at the last minute.

As a pre condition to start the next 7-year budget with the govts, the directly elected European Parliament demanded that this 11bn be paid up by the govts, as the MEPs know that the govts are great at promising their voters lots of nice programmes and regional funding etc but then dont want to pay the bills when they come in at the end of year.

So this is not new money and not a shortall but just the bills which need to be legally paid to keep very popular EU programmes all over Europe running.

Lets take other parts in the article:
- its not Eurocrats looking for anything or deciding anything, its the direcly elected European Parliament and the Commission which is accountable to the parilament, and the Commissioners who are democratically nominated by govts and ratified by the EU parliament. Just like John Kerry is the new US Secretary of State, nominiated and ratified and accountable to the Congrees.
- however the euro crisis is not being handled in normal EU way, but by the govts, and esp. the AAA govts. The troika is not the EU, as the EU is made up of 4 main institutions…the commission, council (govts), ECB and the parliament which has been kept out of the trioka setup and so the troika setup is totally undemocratic. But this is separate from the EU budget issue. If people are not happy with Merkel/Dragi running Europe, then they should agree that the EU parliament needs more power.

The new building (badly needed) for the European Council summits was decided by the prime ministers so blame them. The new Parliament visitors center was also badly need as theres 1000s of tourists visiting Brussels and there was nothing for them to learn about their parliament. The EU is always accused of being remote, so why cant the parliament have a visitors center? It also was about 10 times cheaper than the cost of the US Congress visitors center, and the EU has far more citizens. The mutliple locations of the parliament with monthly trips to Strasbourg is because of the insistence of the French governmnt and not the parliament itself. It will have to change as its stupid, but the EU needs to give the French something in its place. All member states want a slice of the cake in their country, so the French are no different. In Ireland we even have an EU agency in Meath.

The Court of Auditors wants an error rate in spending of less than 2%!!! Would any national govt ever meet that standard?? Of course the author forgets to say that over 80% of the error cases are the respondsibility of the member states themselves and not the EU commission.

Yes its stupid to subsidise tobacco farmers but its to transistion them out of tobacco. And these decisions are made by democratically elected ministers and MEPs, so vote differently if you want other policies.

The EU is not self-managed, the Commission is democratically accountable to the parliament and national ministers. There is actually far more democracy in Brussels than in the Irish so called parliament but the media ignore this. The Irish parliament is extremely weak, and Irish local govenment is non existent. Unlike the EU budget, the Irish budget is kept secret like a rabbitte to be pulled out of a hat on budget day!

What is wrong is the current crisis management, which is dominiated by Merkel/Dragi and the big member states, and not in a open and democratic way with the parliament. That should change.

Lets have a debate of the EU budget, or the financial crisis, or any other EU issue…but the most important thing to remember is all these decisions are been taken by democratically elected prime minister, ministers and/or MEPs. If you want change, then vote for it.

Simplistic tabloid style coverage of the EU is mostly aimed at undermining the whole project, which is exactly what UKIP want.

Ireland has done extremely well from the EU budget for 40 years, with Irish farmers still getting 1bn per year, infrastructure funding, research funding, Erasmus programmes etc. The current EU national leaders are making a hash of handling the crisis, that is what has to change. Reforming the EU by giving more power to the democratically elected parliament, who are accountable at elections like a normal democracy is the way forward.

Then people can really vote for whatever type of EU they wish. Thankfully next year there will be multiple candidates for Commission President with hopefully a real campaign, backed by competiting manifestos etc, media campaigns etc and a debate about future of the EU.

i enjoyed that article…genuinely hope those anecdotes/examples are genuine cause ill be quoting them….

€90m may be less that €900m, but that doesn’t invalidate McKenna’s point about bureaucracy and wastage in the EU behemoth. And it’s probably a bit of a leap to suggest that your comparison makes him a “pathetic idiot”
Perhaps you should consider lightening up, perhaps getting laid?
You’ll feel better, honest.

Jim

I said €900 +billion+ not ‘million’. The difference is not 10x but 10,000 x.

Tell me, when the river has burst its banks & is rushing in thru’ the doors, you & McKenna want us all to look at the dripping from the leaky roof tile?

No, I think ‘pathetic idiot’ fits.

Business people like McKenna have shown that they should not be let anywhere near macro economics. They either haven’t a clue what distinguishes ‘macro’ from a business or household, or are just looking after their own narrow interests. or both.

The reason the majority are suffering ‘austerity’ is because the authorities have refused to even consider the policies that could easily have greatly reduced unemployment following the economic shocks of 2008. Because we share a (flawed) common currency, such measures need to be adopted at the Euro level, but there is no excuse for not demanding these policies be considered.

McKenna has continuously peddled his tired ‘let’s cut public spending’ record, which if it were to have any effect at all, would more likely serve to make the macro situation worse. So obsessed is he with this that he never actually says anything about what he might do with any monies saved. I think we can take it from this omission that a) he would probably just pay down public debt, and b) he has no clue how to run a (macro) economy. (Taking more money out of the economy will only mean more unemployment, less prosperity & less ability to service debt. Exactly the direction the Euro zone is going, & for exactly these reasons.)

There is of course always a worthwhile discussion to be had about the extent of public service provision & what value we get.

But peddling this line in the worst recession since the 1930s is about as stupid, in macro economics terms (did I mention the macro economy is not like a household?) as rearranging the deckchairs while the ship is sinking.