Yahoo Finance Europe's top Brexit man Michel Barnier pockets £72,000 more a year than David Davis
Europe’s lead Brexit negotiator is paid £72,000 a year more than his opposite number in the UK, it has been revealed.
As another row erupted over Britain’s apparent lack of detail ahead of reconvened talks, it emerged that Michel Barnier picks up a gross salary of £213,772 – way more than the £141,000 a year David Davis earns as an MP and Cabinet member.
The revelation is set to cause outrage among Eurosceptic MPs who will see it as another indication of EU excess.
It came as top Eurocrat Jean-Claude Juncker fired off a stinging rebuke to Theresa May over the UK’s handling of the Brexit negotiations.
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Juncker, the European Commission president, slammed the official UK position documents as “unsatisfactory” adding it was “crystal clear” that an “enormous amount” of issues needed to be settled before talks on a future trade deal could begin.
Juncker said the UK “hesitates showing all its cards” but added: “I did read, with the requisite attention, all the papers produced by Her Majesty’s government and none of those is actually satisfactory.
“So there is still an enormous amount of issues which remain to be settled.”
He went on to highlight the “very serious problem” of the Irish border issue and that of citizenship for Europeans and Britons after Brexit in early 2019.
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“We need to be crystal clear that we will commence no negotiations on the new relationship – particularly a new economic and trade relationship – between the UK and the EU before all these questions are resolved,” he said.
“First of all we settle the past before we look forward to the future.”
Brussels’ chief Brexit negotiator Barnier earlier said he was concerned about the lack of clarity and insisted “we must start negotiating seriously”.
Davis and Barnier met on Monday at the start of the latest round of talks which highlighted differences between Brussels and Whitehall over the negotiating papers produced by the UK.
Barnier said: “We need UK papers that are clear in order to have constructive negotiations. And the sooner we remove the ambiguity, the sooner we will be in a position to discuss the future relationship and a transitional period.”
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Davis insisted the UK position papers produced in recent weeks – on issues including Northern Ireland and the continued access of goods to market – were strong in detail.
He said: “They are the products of hard work and detailed thinking that has been going on behind the scenes not just the last few weeks, but for the last 12 months, and should form the basis of what I hope will be a constructive week of talks.”
James Chapman, Davis’ former chief of staff, launched an extraordinary attack on his former boss a couple of weeks ago, accusing him of being lazy and working only three days a week.
For his part, Davis responded by saying: “James was a ‘Remainer’ from the beginning, but he was a very good chief of staff. I am not going to criticise or argue with him.”
