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Some bad faith...

The European Commissioner for Administration, the Slovakian Maroš Sefcovic, yesterday released a surprising press release presenting the reduction in the remuneration of European civil servants. The start of the press release consists of presenting the "dream" situation of Belgian civil servants - benefiting from an increase of 3,6% - to that of European civil servants - suffering a drop of 1,8%. The poor...-:) If the situation is not happy, this comparison - specified in the first sentence of the press release, in its chapter - is tendentious to say the least.

Because the wage base and the tax rate are largely different. It's like having fun comparing the salary of a professional 1st division player to that of a 3rd division player. Between the average salary of a European civil servant (I am not talking about contract agents) and a Belgian civil servant, we have, at a minimum, a ratio of approximately 1 to 2. If we talk about net salary, this gap increases even more…

Comment: the European Commission, usually relatively cautious in attacking a State, is here committing a nominal attack, in rare bad faith. Because it forgets 3/4 of the information, to content itself with simplistic information, bordering on populism. It aims to pit categories of civil servants against others, of citizens against their public service. It's not healthy, it's not right.

Read here the press release

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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