The Council and Commission messages agree on the view that the total savings of 2.5 billion Euroswere the best possible result and that we have to live with these savings. We feel that the result is still unacceptable because it is adding 1.5 billion euros to the one billion euros of savings resulting from the Commission proposal on reviewing the Staff Regulations, and the brutal plan of cutting jobs which is already put to practice.
Strike in the European Institutions. While the Commission and the European Parliament converge on a change in the Staff Regulations that would provide, from 2014 to 2020, savings of € 1 billion, 8 Member States (“net contributors”) in the Council require savings of €5, €10, or €15 billion.
The salaries of contract staff are falling below the statutory minimum salary of a skilled worker in Luxembourg. If the Commission proposal to isolate the secretaries and clerks within a new function group SC is finally adopted, this time you will also have EU officials earning less than skilled workers in Luxembourg.
The ongoing reform will depend on the outcome of a much broader discussion on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020. A ceiling to its Heading 5 –‘Administration’– having been set, it will then be left to the reform of the Staff Regulations itself to specify the ‘details’ of how to implement the savings.
EPSU-CJ morally and financially supports the parents’ European School Non-Discrimination Campaign. The union will take on the contribution to the campaign of those who are concerned parents, Court of Justice colleagues.
Whether or not to transfer to the Community pension scheme pension rights acquired under different schemes is an important decision, which is for you to take.
The Council’s refusal to approve the adjustment of remuneration and pensions is worrying not only because it violates a right of the staff enshrined in the Staff Regulations, but also because it highlights the fact that political ‘appropriateness’ increasingly prevails over the rule of law.
By a formal Decision, the Council refused to adopt the Commission’s proposal to adjust remuneration and pension in accordance with the Method. The Commission has decided to bring an action against the Council in the Court of Justice for not adopting the annual adjustment to remuneration and pensions of EU staff, thus breaching the Staff Regulations.
Since the Industrial Revolution, shorter working hours have become synonymous with social progress. While the legislative practice so far has been to lay down minimum requirements (e.g., a maximum working time), in its draft revision of the Staff Regulations, the Commission is fixing a minimum working week: working longer to ‘offset’ the loss of jobs! This will set a precedent that the Commission will certainly invoke throughout Europe.(article published in FR in Agora Magazine Nr 64).
Inflation in Luxembourg triggered a 2.5% salaries’ increase. Indexation of salaries is safeguarded only thanks to the strong position of Luxembourg’s trade unions. For EU contract staff, this means that not only Function Group I, grade 1, but also FG II, grade 4, are falling below the minimum legal salary for a skilled worker in Luxembourg (read the attachment). If the draft proposal for Revising of the Staff Regulations were to be adopted, secretaries / clerks as a whole would no longer be recruited as officials, but as FG II contract staff.