As mostly every year (yes, we still remember the great salary freeze brought upon us by the 2014 staff regulations reform and a bunch of irresponsible bankers) December is a good pay month. In this month, we all get the adjustment of the nominal net remuneration of European officials in Brussels and Luxembourg, calculated according to the method to maintain a parallel development of purchasing power with the national civil servants in the Member States.
As usual, the adjustment is calculated and applied retroactively from July of the same year. This year, according to the Eurostat Report on the 2019 annual update of remuneration and pensions of EU officials [1] the value is for a positive two percent (+2%, page 12 of the report). This increase corresponds to a 1.5% increase to reflect of cost of living in Brussels/Luxembourg and a 0.5% increase to reflect the salary increase in civil servants’ salaries in a basket of EU Member States. Any changes in the indicators for other work locations are also listed in the same report.
In addition, our pension contribution will be adjusted in a positive way for staff as these will decrease by 0.3%. With this pension contribution reduction the value of our payslips will increase by a total of 2.3%.
toolTips('.classtoolTips19','Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union (\'Staff Regulations [2] (SR)\') are rules stating:
• fundamental conditions of service
• basic rights, duties and obligations of staff.
The SR have been reformed x 2 (so far):
• 2004 (Kinnock White paper)
• 2014 (Regulation 1023/2013 [3])
For a summary of stated intentions and real outcomes of those two reforms check out: European Court of Auditors, 2019, Special report no 15/2019 [4]: Implementation of the 2014 staff reform package at the Commission – Big savings but not without consequences for staff
');