Bill Jamieson: Mad, runaway government? Just look at Brussels

Published on Monday 19 July 2010 15:17

TOP heavy with civil servants? Overspending on government staff ? Bureaucracy run riot? No - for once it's not the Scottish government and St Andrews House.

Indeed, by comparison with what follows here, our administration looks positively thin and austere. Set beside what continues to unfold at the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, Scotland is a model of svelte leanness and efficiency.

Consternation is building over the new European External Action Service (EEAS) the vast EU foreign office now being put together by Labour peer Baroness Ashton. Little wonder Lord Mandelson is spitting that he didn't get this 270,000 a year job. Ashton has an empire to build.

She is arranging the final interviews for a prestigious administrative machine of 7,000 civil servants, a pyramid of high ranking officials, 31 senior ambassadors and their deputies, a further 80 ambassadors for second tier postings and a Brussels headquarters that will house around 500 senior officials and their assistants.

All told, there will be a network of 136 EU embassies round the world, speaking on behalf of the EU's present 27 foreign ministers on conflicts such as Gaza and Iran. Yes, I know, leading EU countries such as Germany, France, Italy and the UK will still insist on separate representation on global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the Group of Eight leading industrial countries and the Group of 20.

The hiring spree at EEAS and the administrative tooling up and kitting out required for this global diplomatic Leviathan could not be taking place at a worse time. It has sparked an outburst of indignation and anger as EU governments have had to embark on tough austerity programmes, cutting public sector workforces, wages and pension benefits while the institutions of the EU appear untouched and impervious to the fiscal pain across the continent. Indeed, the EU as an institution, or more accurately a burgeoning collective of institutions, remains aloof, and on a course of relentless, unstoppable expansion over which member governments, never mind the voters and taxpayers at the bottom of the pile, seem powerless.

Many of the EEAS staff will receive, in addition to their salaries, low tax arrangements, generous pensions and travel allowances and help with school fees and education expenses for children.

The EEAS will control a budget of around €7 billion (5.9bn), a total that includes the EU's substantial aid and development budgets and the costs of peacekeeping operations in places such as Kosovo.

The organisation has already requested an additional €9.5 million for staff salaries. But this is an interim sum and the overall cost over-run for the establishment of EEAS has been put considerably higher.But the EEAS controversy is only one highlight of an overall EU budget that shows every sign of being out of control. A battle is looming this autumn over the proposed overall EU budget for 2011, expected to show a rise of almost six per cent on the current year's total of €113bn. Next year the administrative costs for all EU institutions is scheduled to rise by 4.4 per cent.

Arguably most embarrassing of all for the EU when member governments are slashing pay and benefits of their own civil servants are the continuing increases in pensions and other perks for EU administrative staff.

The administration's pensions bill next year is forecast to rise by 6.9 per cent while the cost of European Schools - the nursery, primary and secondary schools providing high quality free education to children of EU civil servants - is set to grow by 12.5 per cent with the total amounting to €174m.

It is the juxtaposition of fiscal austerity at government level and apparent continuing largesse at EU "head office" that makes our problems pale in comparison.