Brussels defends former commissioners’ hefty allowance

Former Commissioners retain a right to a professional life after serving in Brussels, according to the EU executive which defended the €11,000 a month “transitional allowance” being paid to former Commissioner Joe Borg.

“All former Commissioners are entitled to a transitional allowance to help them integrate back into the employment sector. This has been going on for a long time and is similar to national systems in many member states for former ministers,” a Commission spokesman said yesterday.

Despite working as a consultant with a Brussels-based public affairs group, Fipra, Dr Borg will carry on receiving his monthly transitional allowance until February 2013.

These allowances have been harshly criticised as “out of proportion” and “a waste of EU taxpayers’ money” by many NGOs and lobby groups, but the Commission defended its rules and said the payment was justified so long as there were no conflicts of interest.

Malta’s former Foreign Affairs Minister is one of 17 former EU Commissioners currently receiving transitional allowances.

Together with Ireland’s Charlie McCreevy, he tops the list in the amount of allowances he is claiming. However, the list includes other former Commissioners who currently occupy prestigious positions in their respective member states, including Dalia Grybauskaite, President of Lithuania and Franco Frattini, Italy’s Foreign Minister.

Asked whether it made more sense for these allowances to be discontinued once a former Commissioner has found em­ploy­ment, the Commission said the rules had been in place for a long time and it was up to member states to amend them.

In 2003, the Commission set up an ethics committee to assess the new jobs of former Commissioners particularly in regard to any possible conflict of interest with their former roles.

Dr Borg had applied for permission and was given the green light to take up his new job, with the Commission stating he would not perform any duties related to his former portfolio of fisheries and maritime affairs.

Asked how many times the ethics committee had turned down similar requests by former Commissioners, the spokesman admitted this had never happened so far.

Alter-EU, an alliance of NGOs lobbying for transparency and ethics regulation in the EU, has launched an online campaign aimed at putting pressure on European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to stop the “revolving doors” policy being adopted for former Commissioners and other top EU functionaries.

Called Stop Ex-Commissioners Cashing In, the lobby group’s campaign is inviting EU citizens to send an e-mail to Mr Barroso urging him to change the rules of conduct for former commissioners.

It called for the introduction of a three-year moratorium preventing them from taking on any work which might constitute a conflict of interest with their former function at the helm of the EU executive.

Besides their golden handshake package of more than €130,000 annually for the first three years following their resignation, upon the reaching retirement age of 65, former EU commissioners are entitled to a pension.

This is equivalent to 75 per cent of the salary of commissioners, who are currently paid a basic salary of €20,278 a month.