The president of the Luxembourg-headquartered European Investment Bank (EIB) has appealed to national lawmakers over staff salaries at the multinational lender and the country’s high cost of living.
Luxembourg’s high cost of living, chiefly housing, has made it difficult to attract staff to the country, Nadia Calviño told lawmakers after a meeting on Monday.
“The EIB raised the issue of wages not being in line with cost of living in Luxembourg. European institutions decide wages on the basis of a coefficient which is determined by the location of the job, “ said Pirate Party MP Sven Clement, who attended the meeting.
“Now, the coefficient for Luxembourg is the same as that for Brussels, but the cost of living is much higher in Luxembourg,” Clement told the Luxembourg Times.
Approximately 5,000 EIB employees are struggling with the cost of living, including the high cost of housing, in Luxembourg, Calviño is quoted as saying in a press release following the closed-door meeting. The EIB had employed just over 4,500 people at the end of 2023. There is no current head count for the EIB.
The Grand Duchy has some of the most expensive housing in Europe, with costs being 87% higher than the EU average in 2021.
Also read:Only 64,000 housing units built in the last 18 years
The pace of construction has also proven to be slow with only 64,000 housing units built in the last 18 years.
In an interview with the Luxembourg Times in September, Housing Minister Claude Meisch said that Luxembourg has “some catching up to do” on affordable housing and that EU institutions in the country would be free to build housing for their own staff but should not count on the national government to do so.
Also read:Luxembourg has ‘some catching up to do’ on affordable housing
“The EIB raised the attractiveness issue and it is something that we have to work on. Luxembourg MPs can also make a difference by laying the groundwork for renegotiation of the coefficient for wages,” said lawmaker Clement.
A third of all EU staff at Luxembourg-based institutions now reside in neighbouring Belgium, Germany and France, and there is no movement in the discussions about the corrector coefficient.
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Publish date : 2024-10-14 09:27:00
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