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Remuneration and Pensions of EU staff

European Commission

Eurostat

Unit C3 Statistics for administrative purposes

Ian Dennis, Senior Expert, Team Leader

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Eurostat remuneration statistics for administrative purposes

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  • Policy rationale: good functioning of the HR (pay) system of the EU administration
  • Key principles: parallelism, equality
  • Main users: EU Commission; other EU institutions and EU agencies; international partners; other users
  • Main objective: to calculate the annual update of salaries and pensions, and the correction coefficients for all duty stations (>175)
  • Related work: eg.benchmarking, mission expenses, pensions actuarial liability

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Policy rationale

  • Pay is an important component of HR system: …having the right people in the right place doing the right thing…

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  • Principles are set out in EU Staff Regulations (1962 + periodic reforms)
  • Implementation methodology is adopted by annual Working Group
  • Objective statistical calculation by Eurostat

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Key principles

EU Staff Regulations

    • Articles 64 & 65 + Annexes X & XI (remuneration)
    • Article 83 + Annex XII (pensions)

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  1. Parallel evolution of EU salaries with those of national civil services (average for Member States)
  2. Equal purchasing power of headquarters salaries (Brussels) in all other EU duty stations

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Main users

  • Commission: SG, DG HR, DG BUDG, PMO, SJ, ESTAT (on behalf all institutions + agencies)

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  • Data partners (UN, OECD)
  • External users (EPO, EuroControl, etc)
  • Transparent public dissemination

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Various reporting obligations

  • Annual Report: 31 October (situation as at 1.July)
  • Interim Report (situation as at 1.January)

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  • 4 yearly review report

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  • Ad-hoc reports

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“Article 64” calculations

  • Correction coefficients (@July, @January)
    • Intra-EU staff
    • Pensioners
    • Extra-EU staff

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  • Maximum use of existing data: ECP, HICP
  • Some specific surveys (rents, school fees)
  • Other data (no burden for MS) eg. staff family budget survey
  • International collaboration/exchange (eg. UN)

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Correction coefficients

  • PPPs are price relatives showing the ratio of prices in national currencies of the same good or service in different countries bilaterally with reference to headquarters (Brussels)

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  • Dividing the PPPs by Exchange Rates to Euro gives a percentage adjustment factor to apply to salaries expressed in local currency, which ensures same purchasing power as in Brussels

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“Article 65” calculations

  • Country specific indicator measures the evolution of salaries of national civil servants in central public administration

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  • Two stages:
    1. Preliminary forecast for year (January)
    2. Annual questionnaire: definitive results (July)

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  • Comparative information

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Preliminary forecast

  • Relatively low response burden
    • Forecast pay evolution in nominal terms
    • Forecast consumer price inflation

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  • Typical respondent:
    • Government ministry responsible for administering the national civil service (eg. HM Treasury, Prime Minister Cabinet)
    • National economic forecasting agency
    • National Statistics Institute

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Definitive data collection

  • Detailed questionnaire
    • Staff numbers (breakdown by grade)
    • Gross salary + net salary (breakdown by grade)
  • Transmission via eDAMIS
  • Bilateral collaborative validation process

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  • Preparatory first step: develop a specific country manual (“inventory”) and construct a model of gross pay components and statutory deductions

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Specific A65 definition

  • Goal is to identify pure salary movement
    • Eliminate structural components and individual factors (eg. overtime, merit pay, promotion, reforms): comparing standard average salary figure at t0 and t1 is insufficient

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  • Only measure movement for a target group of national civil servants
    • Central public administration, permanent status
    • Exclude certain ISCO codes (military, police, healthcare workers, education workers, …)

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Average evolution for EU Member States

  • Core sample: 11 countries
    • BE, DE, ES, FR, IT, LU, NL, AT, PL, SE, UK

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  • For comparison: whole EU

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Transparent dissemination

  • Dedicated Section (annual reports, explanations, methodology)
  • Compliance reports

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  • Free Data Tables
    • EU11 + EU28 + individual MS
    • CC (intra-EU, extra-EU)

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  • CIRCABC archive (working group papers)

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Thank you for your attention !

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