What does a European politician earn?

Posted on:April 18 2005

On sunday, I wanted to know how much money I am paying for the european politicians. I did not find one single real official source for this. Maybe I am blind. But I am suspecting that they know why they don't publish these numbers. Here is what I googled together from several pages. Note that these values may not be 100% correct. But after reviewing lots of pages, I think they must be quite close to reality. A European paralamentarian gets the following:

money	purpose / comment
15.339 € per month	I think this is what german EU parliarmentarians get, don't know if this is different in other countries
+ 268 € per day	They get this when they actually work. So what do they get the monthly money for?
+ 1.000 € per week	Travel expenses, tax free. In fact they request this every week, and no one examinates if they are doing this rightly.
+ 3.785 € per month	General expenses, tax free. Just like travel expenses above.
+ 14.865 € per month	Money to pay assistants. Some of these politicans seem to declare their wifes as assistants. No joke.
priceless	Lots of shocking high insurances: Death, accidents, pension. All dues are being paid by the european people.
insert big number here	Additional jobs. They are allowed to have other jobs, and they have. Looks like the EU parlamentarian job isn't a lot of work to do.

This is about 44.281 € per month. 531.372 € per year. Or 686.957 $ per year. For sitting around some hours per day. For being arse licked by lobbyists like software patent supporters. For not knowing anything about the stuff you are voting for.

Comments:

Regarding additional jobs: an undisclosed source tells that running porn sites is at least one of them ;)

Kralizec

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2005-04-18 13:01:00

Also, you forget to include some other perk items. There was a chain email going around a few years ago called "The Cost of a Car" and pointed out how politicians don't have a chance at understanding real people.

It basically said:

When a politician wants a car, he goes out and buys it. Total cost: $20,000.

When a normal person wants to buy a car, he goes out and gets a loan. Pays taxes on the loan. Pays taxes on the sale of the car. Pays taxes on the money he earns to pay the loan. Pays for full insurance until the loan is paid off. Pays taxes on the insurance. Pays yearly property taxes for owning the car. Cost of car = $20,000. Taxes paid to buy the car = $40,000. Total cost: $60,000

One of the biggest issues in our state elections this year was all the guys that are voting to raise our taxes, yet haven't paid their own in 5+ years.

Saigumi

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2005-04-18 14:34:00

I would argue that this doesn't just apply to politicians, but wealthy citizens in general. The tax brackets are configured in such a way that a wealthy person can end up paying less total tax (percent-wise) because of all the little loopholes and ways they can "hide" their money in tax-free investments. I don't even have enough money TO invest at all! Truthfully once you HAVE a certain amount of money, it is cake to just compound that into tons more through investments, but investments have a bar to entry, you have to buy so many cshares at such and such a price just to get started...that's what sucks, why can't I just invest like 200$ in something?

buhatkj

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2005-04-19 00:58:00

So, as we can't change this, the only possibility that remains is to also become a politician :-)

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2005-04-19 09:37:00