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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Wed May 16 20:23:03 2012, in response to EUEUEUEUEU Olog, posted by RockParkMan on Sat Nov 12 14:58:17 2011.
fiogf49gjkf0d What happened to austerity??
The Local
Merkel gives self and ministers pay raisePublished: 16 May 12 15:22 CETGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel will soon have an extra €930 in her pocket each month, after the country's cabinet decided on Wednesday to award themselves their first pay raise for over a decade.
Merkel, her ministers and their parliamentary secretaries of state will see their wages rise in three stages between now and August 2013, until they all get 5.7 percent more. It is the first pay raise that the German cabinet has taken in twelve years.
The chancellor's total pay is set to rise from €16,152 per month before tax to around €17,016. This does not include her €1,022 “special duties” allowance.
Ministers' pay will rise by €750 euros to around €13,795 a month. This will amount to a bump of around €9,000 over a year.
Until now, ministers’ wages have been set relative to those of civil servants. And despite considerable protest about the idea of separating them, particularly over the past two years, the cabinet decided to go ahead with the change.
Merkel, recently named the world's most powerful woman by Forbes Magazine, is famously down-to-earth and was snapped earlier this month shopping on her own for groceries.
She has been the chief advocate of austerity in the eurozone during the debt crisis, earning her criticism from some quarters, notably Greece and more recently France, whose new leader François Hollande wants to focus on growth.
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