Origin Payment of compensation for service to civil servants in the National Experts Program

The issue raised concerns the appropriateness of the compensation payment for service to civil servants in the National Experts Programme.

In the first place, the legal framework for implementation must be analysed. In this case, both the provisions of the Commission Decision of 12 November 2008 on the regime applicable to national experts on secondment and national experts on vocational training assigned to the Commission services, as amended by the Commission Decision of 29 January 2010 (the Commission Decision, hereinafter) and Royal Decree 462/2002 of 24 May on compensation for service, should be invoked.

In this regard, Royal Decree 462/2002, of 24 May, on compensation for service, establishes in its article 2, paragraph 3 that “the National Experts in the Commission of the European Communities shall be governed, for the purposes of compensation, by the provisions of the corresponding Decision of that Commission, not being subject to the provisions of this Royal Decree in this respect”.

This Decision applies “to the national experts on secondment seconded by the Commission” defining them as “persons placed at the disposal of the Commission by a national, regional or local public administration, or by an IGO, who are used by the Commission to avail themselves of their expertise in a particular field”.

In its Article 2, the Decision regulates the figure of the “National Experts at no cost” that they are “those for which the Commission does not pay any of the daily subsistence allowance provided for in Chapters III and VI and does not cover any of the costs provided for in this Decision, other than those relating to the performance of its duties during the secondment”.

Therefore, it is the Administration from which the interested party comes that will have to pay the expenses corresponding to the stay of the outstanding expert in the Commission, in addition to his ordinary remuneration, the payment of which is classified as obligatory in the Decision.

Therefore, the payment of the diets must be made in accordance with the provisions of Royal Decree 462/2002, of March 24, in relation to the service commissions, and must be adjusted to the conditions and requirements of the aforementioned Commission Decision.

In relation to the specific concepts to be paid, this unit refers to the criterion on the subject of the Directorate-General for Personnel Costs.

Finally, it should be noted that the official will be responsible for remaining in the administrative situation of active service, under the conditions provided for in article 86 of the consolidated text of the Law on the Basic Status of Public Employees, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of 30 October.

All of the foregoing is without prejudice to recalling that, according to the regime of competences of this management center, the answers to queries issued by this general directorate are merely informative and, consequently, are not of a binding criterion, nor do they give rise to rights or expectations of law, nor imply any link with the type of procedures to which they refer. Furthermore, in the absence of a mandatory or binding nature, the bodies receiving such replies may, where appropriate, finally take a decision that does not correspond to the opinion contained therein.

The responses to queries contained in this bulletin address the issues raised in the light of the regulations in force at the time of their issuance, so that such responses may be affected by subsequent legislative changes or judicial decisions.