EU court to decide on pay increase

National government leaders including Prime Minister Gordon Brown have called for the planned increase for well paid eurocrats to be halved.

But yesterday the 27 Commissioners unanimously agreed to defend the full pay rise in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

The move was decided at the first Commission meeting of the year and amounts to a showdown with EU leaders in the face of threatened strike action by nearly 45,000 staff in the European Commission, the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers.

The 3.7 per cent pay deal is based on a legally binding formula the member states themselves agreed in 2004. The proposed 2010 rise was calculated as usual on an average of the previous year's civil service pay scales in eight of the richer EU countries, including the UK and Germany.

But the inflation-busting increase is seen in national capitals as sending the wrong signal when public sector workers are facing pay restrictions.

The Commissioners endorsed a recommendation from their President, Jose Manuel Barroso, to go to court, confident that judges will back the EU staff.