ECJ says Council was wrong to block pay rise

The Council of Ministers will have to decide whether to award EU officials the rest of a 3.7% pay rise after the European Court of Justice ruled that the Council was wrong to block the full increase in 2009. 

The ECJ ruled yesterday (24 November) that the Council had acted beyond its powers in blocking a 3.7% increase in December 2009 and awarding a rise of only 1.85%. The court said that the only margin of discretion the Council had over the increase was when a special clause was triggered in the case of a “serious and sudden deterioration in the economic situation”. The ECJ said that the Council had not invoked this clause.

New decision

A spokesman for the European Commission, which had mounted the legal challenge to the Council decision, said that the Council would have to take a new decision. He said that the Commission would not propose invoking the clause for sudden economic deterioration, adding: “It was not necessary then. It’s not necessary now”.

The 3.7% proposed by the Commission in 2009 was based on a method used to keep the salaries of EU officials in line with national civil servants in eight member states.

The Council refused to grant the full increase in 2009 because of national cuts in public spending and public sector pay and pensions in response to the economic crisis.

Negotiations over the 2011 budget are already tense because the Council wants to limit the increase in next year’s budget to 2.9% compared to 2010, and will be unwilling to accept any other additional costs.

A spokesman for Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, said that the Commission would not include the additional sum that the rest of the pay increase would cost – €72.5 million – in its new proposal for the 2011 budget, because it did not want to pre-empt a decision by the Council.

Günther Lorenz, secretary-general of the Union Syndicale staff union, welcomed the court’s judgement, saying it confirmed the union’s belief that there was “no margin for manoeuvre” for the Council over pay increases calculated using the method, other than invoking the clause for exceptional circumstances. He pointed out that the Council had not asked the Commission to trigger the clause in 2009.

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