Found: The EU's 29,000 Employees Hiding in Brussels
by Rob Watts

The European Commission's website claims it has 25,000 staff. The British Government thinks the number is about 37,000. But the total employed by the Brussels executive is actually more than 54,000, researchers at the Westminster think tank Open Europe have discovered.

Many earn far more than senior Whitehall civil servants. Open Europe found that the commission itself employs more than 42,000 officials, but a further 12,000 are employed at low-profile organisations such as the European Data Protection Supervisor, the Community Plant Variety Office and the European Personal Selection Agency.

Open Europe has also discovered that there are more than twice as many Brussels officials earning top salaries as there are in the British civil service. It found almost 10,000 EU officials earning more than £54,000, compared with 4,640 across all Whitehall departments.

Lorraine Mullally, of Open Europe, said: "The EU discreetly publishes a Statistical Bulletin listing staff levels at its agencies, but when we contacted these agencies directly we found they had far more staff than listed."

Many of the agencies took months to answer requests. One, the European Police College, repeatedly refused to disclose its staff numbers.

Michael Gove, a Conservative MP who sits on the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, said: "We know that the EU has a system of allocating jobs that is more about giving jobs to the boys in favoured member states, and not about spending taxpayers' money efficiently. It's pork-barrel politics."

The high head count of the commission and its satellite bodies will embarrass member states' governments across the community.

A few days ago, Geoff Hoon, the minister for Europe, said the commission and its agencies employed 37,000 people, but that seems well wide of the mark.

A page on the EU website reads: "The institution (has)….approximately 25,000 staff. Too many? Not really, if you consider that we are responsible for a wide variety of policy areas and activities and that we are just as the local authority of a medium sized European City."

This weekend there seems no end to the rising head count. The commission's website lists scores of job adverts for translators, interpreters, lawyers, administrators and anti-fraud officers.

And the EU also plans to establish two new departments this year - The European Chemicals Agency and the EU Gender Institute.
The Sunday Telegraph, 28th January 2007