The budget requests of the European Parliament, which asks for additional staff for 2023, arouse strong reluctance from the member states, whose budget ministers meet on Friday in Brussels.
A conciliation is underway with the European Parliament to try to reach a compromise on the overall EU budget for 2023, which the Council (the member states) wants to set at 183.9 billion euros and the Parliament at 187.3 billion (185.6 billion for the Commission) . The positions of the institutions diverge on several points. Specifically on the operating budget of the European Parliament, which requires 52 additional posts and an increase in the allocation that can be used to hire parliamentary assistants, by 228.6 million euros.
The salaries of European civil servants are indexed to inflation
The Czech Deputy Minister of Finance, Jirí Georgiev, in charge of the negotiations on the Council side, called this Friday to maintain a “stable” workforce level. Last July, the Council lashed out at Parliament’s demands, recalling the need for “all institutions to show restraint” in a context of high inflation.
Member states find it necessary to restrict new posts in the institutions also due to the automatic indexation of European civil servants’ salaries to inflation, which represents a 6.9% salary increase by 2023, we learned from European sources. A diplomate européen juge “de plus en plus difficile d’expliquer, at a moment où les gens sont confrontés à des difficultés pour payer leurs billes d’energie, où les gouvernements mettent in place des plans d’aide, that the Parlement demands toujours Plus”.
Additional positions dedicated to security
For its part, Parliament indicates that its planned budget for 2023 is 2.2 billion euros, 3.96% more than in 2022, and explains that the 52 additional posts are dedicated to security and cybersecurity.
“It is understandable that we are strengthening the resilience of our institutions against all the hybrid threats we are currently facing,” said the European Parliament’s budget rapporteur, German MEP Niclas Herbst. The Council “wants to put pressure on Parliament because we have many discrepancies on the general budget (of the EU), it is part of the usual game,” he relativized.
Source: BFM TV
