BRUSSELS — Days ahead of a summit meeting where leaders of the European Union’s 27 member states are to wrestle again with a proposed seven-year budget for the bloc, an E.U. spokesman was forced to defend the salaries pulled down by some officials.

At a time when many European governments have been compelled to impose stringent budget cuts, the issue of salaries and perquisites for E.U. officials has resonated. In November, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain called on officials in Brussels to share the pain that austerity measures have brought to millions of Europeans.

On Sunday, the German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag stoked the controversy by comparing the salaries of some E.U. officials to the compensation paid to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Anthony Gravili, a spokesman for the European Commission, told a news conference on Monday that such figures were flawed.

“It’s a totally unfair comparison,” said Mr. Gravili, who offered a lengthy rebuttal of the article but did not mention the newspaper by name. “No official earns more than Chancellor Merkel.”

Mr. Gravili criticized comparisons of Ms. Merkel’s monthly salary, excluding allowances and other additions, to E.U. salaries including allowances and benefits. European Commission show that the monthly base salary of the most senior E.U. official is €18,370, or $24,830. Ms. Merkel’s monthly base salary is €21,000. Of that, €17,000 is her pay as chancellor, while €4,000 is her reduced salary as a member of the German Parliament, Mr. Gravili said.

Once Ms. Merkel’s basic allowances as both chancellor and Parliament member were included, Mr. Gravili said, the chancellor’s monthly pay was about €25,000.

E.U. officials generally pay low taxes, but Mr. Gravili said he did not have the figures available to say whether this would raise the officials’ after-tax income above Ms. Merkel’s. Inge Grässle, a German member of the European Parliament and a member of the body’s budgetary control committee, said that the highest-paid E.U. official paid taxes equivalent to about 25 percent of their gross salary.

Germany contributes most to the E.U. budget, which was about €135 billion last year.

E.U. officials receive steady criticism about waste and bloat but only about 6 percent of all spending goes to the Union’s administration, which is staffed by 55,000 people, including 6,000 translators, most of them in Brussels.

European political leaders will gather in Brussels on Thursday to consider a budget proposal of roughly €1 trillion for 2014-2020. The proposal trims 1 percent from the European Commission’s requested spending for administrative costs. Britain has argued for deeper cuts, saying that those costs, while relatively small in comparison to the overall E.U. budget, are symbolically important.

Unlike E.U. officials, the 27 members of the European Commission are political appointees. Their salaries are much closer to those of national leaders like Ms. Merkel, and in some cases may exceed them.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the commission, is paid a basic monthly salary of €25,351, a residence allowance equal to 15 percent of that salary, and additional allowances for expenses like running a household and schooling for children. The seven vice presidents of the commission earn basic monthly salaries of €22,963.

Mr. Gravili said he did not have the figures available to comment on the comparison of the commissioners’ after-tax salaries with Ms. Merkel’s.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/business/global/eu-officials-salaries-draw-fire.html?partner=rss&emc=rss