Estonian women strike gold in European Commission

Illustration: graafika: Silver Alt

This decade, ranks of Estonian officials in European Commission have been on the rise, with Estonian’s share in commission far larger than in EU population. Estonian ladies, in particular, have been very victorious at grabbing positions.

At the start of the year, the commission had 202 officials recruited from Estonia, which equals 0.9 per cent of the entire officialdom of 23,600. Population-wise, however, Estonians only make 0.3 per cent of EU (Eurostat figures at start of last year).

In 2010, 187 permanent officials with Estonian background worked at the commission (not including contracted employees).

Many high officials

As we know, European Commission officials come in two categories: AD or administrators dealing with political content, and AST or assistants, doing support stuff. At the start of the year, Estonians split into 134 AD and 68 AST doers.

Furthermore, officials fall into ranks, indicating their position in the hierarchy. The highest AD16 officials are only 34, none of them Estonians.

The next AD15 category amounted, at the start of the year, to 186 persons. And here we meet two Estonians: Henrik Hololei, commission’s vice president and transport commissioner Siim Kallas’ chief of staff, and Signe Ratso – head adviser to commission’s general directorate for trade.

Third from the top i.e. AD14 officials are 480 in number. And, again, two Estonians: senior adviser to Siim Kallas’ staff Margus Rahuoja and Maive Rute, who used to work as head of commission’s general directorate for innovation and SMEs, now educating herself at Harvard University, USA.

Naturally, the rank is linked to pay. A fresh AST1-level recruit’s basic wages are around €2,300 a month, while at level AD16 they will, after four years’ service, get ca €16,000.

Of Estonian officials, 159 are ladies and 43 gentlemen. Estonian ladies clearly have more breakthrough power in Brussels, as of all female officials in commission they make a whopping 1.3 per cent – while our guys’ share amounts to only 0.4 per cent.

As much as a hundred of female Estonian officials deal with politics, our male AD number being 34.

Looking at general statistics, male and female officials are quite nicely in balance. However, the ladies enjoy a slight majority. Ladies: 12,360. Gentlemen: 11,240.

Finns not doing badly, either

Estonians’ share in European Commission equals that of Latvians (although the latter has over 2 million inhabitants, 0.4 per cent of EU). Finns are represented by 519 persons or 2.2 per cent of all officials, while the Finnish population is 1.1 per cent of EU’s total.

While evaluating Finn’s positions in European Commission, the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat recently found that, among comparable countries, Sweden was a bit better represented, with Finns slightly outdoing Denmark, Austria and Ireland.

As might, perhaps, be expected, it is not the French or Germans dominating the European Commission, but rather Belgians. Belgium is represented by 4,397 euro-officials – nearly a fifth of European Commission’s total. This is explained by the commission being located in Brussels.