Are you not getting all the necessary educational allowance information from the other parent? Do you feel that you are being treated unfairly? Generation 2004 would prefer to share more positive stories about the PMO, but sometimes there are shortcomings that need to be pointed out and acted on! We have come across a case where a parent-official was seconded out of the Commission for four years to discover that the other parent-official was collecting monthly PMO educational allowances during that time without disclosing them.
That parent-official monopolized the entire amount to reduce 50% of the private school tuition payment for the child. When the first parent-official discovered the discrepancy by chance upon full-time return to the Commission, the PMO refused to disclose this information citing privacy concerns. When that parent-official showed that he too was paying for 50% of the private school tuition, the PMO ignored that key aspect as well, insisting that an official agreement or a court order needed to be in place. The PMO could not explain what the parent-official was supposed to do if an agreement could not have taken place because the other parent-official refused to disclose the allowance when an agreement could have been made in the first place(!). Furthermore, a local court declined jurisdiction over the case citing it was a Commission matter. To add insult to injury – and leaving aside the notion of collegiality and the protection of family life as outlined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights -, a 2013 Commission Decision clearly states that there is a duty to inform by a parent-official receiving an educational allowance. The educational allowance is meant to serve the child’s actual education costs, that is, the core tuition, which is mutually shared by both parents – not to be applied to other costs or to the benefit of only one parent-official. The PMO is currently about to face an Article 90(2) complaint to probe this case further; in this complaint, the negatively affected parent-official highlights the strong evidence of unjustified ‘double-funding’ as the educational allowance and the other parent-official’s tuition contribution explicitly overlap (i.e. costs incurred).
Do you have a similar sad PMO allowance story? Please share it with us so we can help rectify this antiquated, discriminatory, untransparent PMO policy.