Hacker News Reader

Comment by jabiko | Hacker News Reader

I think its important to know that there are 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament in total. One of them was taken into custody.

View on HN

> there are 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament in total

Of course. First rule in government spending: why have one vice-president when you can have 14 at fourteen times the price?

It’s easy to paint it this way, but consider the fact that concentrations of power in few people almost always leads to gross corruption in manners that are uncorrectable (except with revolution).

This is why some people do not want small government. Not because they argue that large government is efficient or cheap: it’s that there are more checks and balances on power.

I think CGP Greys video on “rules for rulers” illustrates the point quite clearly. https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

We see this across the Atlanic in Canada where each government starts off with few cabinet minister. After a few elections new departments are setup, everyone in the government party ends up as a minister or assistant. The bigger the government usually the more corruption until they change parties and repeat again.

So we multiplied the price of the ticket to corrupt the whole parliament. But you know what, actually this parliament is made in such a way that there is no need to bribe the majority of the parties. It is enough to have a small blocking or active percentage.

On the other hand, at the European commission, where the real power is, we don't have 14 presidents and there have been corruptions, serious corruptions.

The truth is that there is 14 positions because it was necessary to give empty chairs to all the political parties of the member countries. In Europe, no politician, no matter how many times he or she has been defeated or scandalized, has difficulty finding a job.

Each one being paid €22,122.10 monthly, apparently

As one of the highest political posts in Europe and being paid less than most FAANG engineers.

Somehow I doubt "most" FAANG engineers pull in 280,000 USD per year. I'll give you that many are, but "most"?

I have no idea if the data is any good, but this puts the median at $220k-250k (and much more for Netflix):

https://medium.com/@mikldd/data-salaries-at-faang-companies-...

Thank you for some data on the topic. Seems it doesn't include non-US salaries, so fair to say the conclusion is that most FAANG engineers don't earn 280k USD/year.

Which FAANG pays €22k _Monthly?!_

In SF, not in Europe

depends if we're talking before/post tax, right?

But with more power to being imn bags of cash for policies voted. Not paying people in power can be more costly. There is a reason why faangs pay so high, it reduces corruption

That seems a bit high, are you sure you're not confusing it with the President/Vice president of the commission?

Upvoted simply for the _Contact_ paraphrase/reference. :-)

EP needs diversity in leadership to be legitimate to the european peoples, since they are from many different countries.

The article is from 2014 but shouldn't have changed much: https://transparency.eu/how-much-does-an-mep-make/

The difference between an MEP and a VP seems to be 800€ / month, not a whole lot and it's a way for each party to be represented in the administrative body of the parliament

800 gross a month is probably a life changing amount to at least half of all European citizens.

And that's not even counting the remaining >21.000 EUR / month that they earn.

And we're talking about a European salary! Which they don't even pay income taxes on (only a small EU tax). So that's practically after-tax money we're talking about.

The argument is that saving the 800€ / month for the 14 VPs won’t make much of a difference for the European citizens.

We are not paying 800 EUR / month for these 14 VPs, we are paying more than 22.000 EUR / month, each, which is somewhere between 3.7 and 4.6 million EUR / year in total, for the 14 VPs.

That can definitely make a difference in many European citizens' lives (although, not all Europeans at the same time, of course).

The argument was about whether there should be 14 VPs: “why have one vice-president when you can have 14 at fourteen times the price?” If they weren’t VPs, they would still be regular MPs, so only a 800 € difference.

> If they weren’t VPs, they would still be regular MPs, so only a 800 € difference.

But if those 14 VPs were MPs then there wouldn't be the need for 14 other MPs.

Which means that the difference per VP would be the price of an MP + 800 EUR (of difference between VP and MP), which is exactly the price of a VP.

In other words, no, the difference would still be ~3.7 - 4.6 million / year in total.

Being a VP is just a role you can assume as an MEP. Reducing the number of VPs won’t reduce the number of MEPs. Reducing the number of MEPs is orthogonal to reducing the number of VPs.

> The monthly gross MEP salary, under the single statute, is €9,386.29 (from 01/01/2022). It is paid out of the Parliament's budget. All MEPs pay EU tax and insurance contributions, after which the salary is €7,316.63.

First result on Google for MEP salary. Where did you get the 22000 from?

Your source doesn't mention:

1. Daily subsistence allowance (~5000 EUR/month)

2. General expenditure allowance (~4300 EUR/month)

3. Travel allowances (up to ~2400 EUR/month)

4. Vice-president allowance (~800 EUR/month)

These are numbers for 2014, when the base salary was ~8000 EUR/month.

Since the base salary is now ~9400 EUR/month, you can probably add another 20% on top of the numbers I just mentioned.

That is, of course, assuming they didn't come up with more allowances since then...

Plus they get another 70% of everything they earned as a pension.

They also pay a small EU tax instead of a regular income tax like the peasants.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the base monthly salary was payed 14 or 15 times per year rather than the 12 that many people usually assume. At least, that's what happens in the European countries I've lived in.

Definitely not many. How many people do you think there are in Europe? 4.6 million EUR would allow you to give 1€ to 1% of the entire EU population.

On the other hand you can say that these VPs are in part responsible for the 2 trillion EUR covid recovery plan, which would allow 100% of the EU population to receive around 4500€.

Primarily the purpose is to make sure that the different political views as well as different EU memeber states and regions are represented. Together they have to be able to represent the whole spread views and cultures, for being respected inside parliament as well as by the public.

Whether 14 vice plus one president is the sweet spot one can argue, but this is two vice presidents per political group in Parlament.

Different views across all the EU member states are represented through the MEPs.

14 VPs is just a small part of the EU gravy train.

For policy making, yes, MEPs are the ones voting. For administrative tasks, deciding on parliament agenda, etc. you need a smaller group for being practical in decision making. Starting each session with a debate on the day's agenda (while in some situations it is a relevant police decision which has to be taken by parliament) and adminsitrative routine tasks is quite inefficient.

Now the parliament has 7 different political groups (fractions) and a bunch of independent members. Having two VPs per fraction is somewhat a compromise between true representative (which would need more people) or ignoring more (they are already ignoring independents)

And yes, of course, you could also force less fractions, but fractions covering too broad of a spectrum are quite problematic too (see spread in the two parties in the US system ...)

And in cost or whatever it is a small part of what parliament costs anyways and quite neglectible.

This is why there are nearly 700 general officers in USA military...

Also important to note that there are 705 deputees in the European Parliament. One of them was taken into custody, which is 0.15%

So, we can easily say that there is a good chance that at least 7% of the vice presidency of Europe is corrupt...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com