What Crisis? Greek Parliament Employee Earns €10,000 per Month …in Brussels

 

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Politics, Society

Greek Parliament needed several hours to swallow and confirm the news that an employee at the parliament earns 10,000 EUR per month in times when wages and pensions cuts leave many Greeks with a thin income. The office of the Greek Parliament confirmed that the employee is the liaison officer between the Greek and the European Parliament and receives a monthly salary plus expenses, overtime bonus and a juicy bonus of 8,000 euro per month for working abroad.

According to Proto Thema and NewsIt, Greek Parliament had two employees to carry out the duties of liaison officers in the Brussels office paying 192,000 euro annual in form of allowance. However due to the economic crisis the two employees were replaced by the current employee ( a former aide of ex EU Commissioner and ex PASOK Minister Christos Papoutsis) in 2010.

General secretary of Parliament, Thanos Papaioannou, trying to justify the annual allowance of 96,000 euro, said that the employee has a degree in English Literature, a Master in Political science and speaks four languages.

Papaioannou added that the allowance is not being paid by the Parliament but by the Foreign Ministry and that this allowance is the same for all civil servants working abroad. He also dismissed claims that the the whole of allowance is tax-free,  saying that 50% of this is being taxed. The other 50% is tax-free.

Of course, the allowance for working abroad is not the same for all civil servants.

In Greek private sector an employee with the same skills would not get more than 1,800-2,000 euro per month. Before the crisis. Now it’s even less.

But now, of course, we get an identity crisis, when we read such monthly salaries.

PS I really do not understand why Greek taxpayers got angry about this news. At least, we feed only one of these species and not two as it was the case between 2005 and 2010, when borrowed money was plenty in this country

What Crisis? Greek Parliament Employee Earns €10,000 per Month …in Brussels