Tory and Labour-appointed EU commissioners who leave their posts receive more than £1 million each in the form of pensions and benefits, according to the Open Europe think tank.
“European commissioners leaving office later this year will receive more than £1 million (€1.1 million) each in pension payments and so-called ‘transitional’ and ‘resettlement’ allowances,” Open Europe has announced. The group, an independent London-based body, said that the EU commission will have cost the European taxpayer more than £73 million (€75 million) in the last five years.
EU Commissioners are appointed by the Government. Previous British EU commissioners include Peter Mandelson (Labour), Chris Patten (Conservative), Neil Kinnock (Labour), Bruce Millan (Labour), Leon Brittan (Conservative), Francis Cockfield (Conservative), Stanley Clinton Davis (Labour), Ivor Richard (Labour), Christopher Tugendhat (Conservative), Roy Jenkins (Labour), George Thomson (Labour) and Christopher Soames (Conservative).
According to Open Europe, Britain’s current EU Commission, the Labour Party’s Catherine Ashton, who replaced Peter Mandelson last year and has therefore held the post for less than a year, “will qualify for an ample pension of £9,600 (€10,335) a year, in addition to three years of ‘transition’ payments, valued at over £89,000 (€95,817) a year. On top of this, she will receive an £18,700 (€20,132) ‘resettlement’ allowance.”
When Mr Mandelson left his office as trade commissioner in the autumn of 2008, he was reported to have received around €1 million as a pay-off and pension package from Brussels. All this is without counting the wages and perks that commissioners receive during their years of service, which amount to “at least £220,000 (€236,852) a year.”
According to the think tank, commission president Jose Manuel Barroso receives an annual salary of some €296,000, which is more than that of the American president. “It is a topsy-turvy world when an unelected EU official is earning the same wage as the democratically elected President of the United States,” Open Europe analyst Sarah Gaskell stated.
“Taxpayers around Europe, whose pensions have been swallowed up in the recession, will rightly question why they are footing such an enormous bill for a handful of remote officials who they never voted for in the first place,” she added.
In total, the commission will in its five-year term have cost the European taxpayer more than €75 million, including salaries, pensions and various allowances, but excluding other perks, such as family allowances and subsistence allowances.
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