EU Salary by City: What the Same Grade Pays in Brussels, Luxembourg and 25 Other Countries

An EU official’s salary does not depend on the city alone, but the city changes it more than most candidates expect. The same AD5 post pays €9,328 gross a month in Dublin and €4,718 in Sofia. The reason is the correction coefficient: a percentage set for every duty station that adjusts EU pay to the local cost of living. This article lists the coefficient for all 27 EU countries, shows where the EU institutions and agencies employ staff in each one, and works out what an AD5 graduate earns there.

How EU pay is built

Every EU official and other staff member on the same grade and step has the same basic salary, wherever they work. For a newly recruited AD5 at step 1 it is €6,153 a month. On top of it come allowances that depend on your situation:

• Expatriation allowance — 16% of basic salary and family allowances (at least €714.89) for most staff recruited from another country.
• Household allowance — €241.21 plus 2% of basic salary, mainly for married staff and staff with dependent children.
• Dependent child allowance — €527.06 per child, plus an education allowance.

The correction coefficient then multiplies the salary and these allowances. It is the only part of the package that depends on the city. What you take home is lower than the gross: EU staff pay an EU tax on their salary instead of national income tax, plus contributions for the pension and health insurance and a solidarity levy. For an AD5 the estimated net is about 80% of the gross.

The correction coefficient, explained

The coefficient compares the cost of living at a duty station with Brussels. Eurostat measures prices in each place every year, and the coefficients are updated with the annual salary adjustment. A coefficient of 130.7 means that life in Ireland is judged about 31% more expensive than in Belgium, so the salary is multiplied by 1.307.

Three details that matter:

• It follows the place of work, not your home. Someone working in Brussels and living across the border in France is still paid at 100.
• It is one figure per country, with two exceptions. Munich has its own coefficient (112.0), and so has Varese (87.0), which applies to staff at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra. The EU delegations outside the Union have their own coefficients too.
• It changes every year. The update, usually published around December, applies backdated from 1 July, so a coefficient can move up or down by a few points.

EU salary by city: all 27 countries

The table shows each country’s coefficient, examples of where EU staff work there, and the pay of an AD5 at step 1, single, with the expatriation allowance. Every country has a Commission representation in its capital, so every capital is a duty station, even where no agency is based.

Gross = (basic salary + expatriation allowance) × coefficient. Net is an estimate: the EU tax is progressive and depends on personal allowances, so real figures vary. Abbreviations are the agencies’ usual names; the EU institutions map shows them all.

Brussels, Luxembourg, Dublin, Paris, Alicante, Warsaw: four profiles compared

The coefficient scales every grade and every family situation the same way. Here is the estimated monthly net for four common profiles in five duty stations, all at step 1 and with the expatriation allowance:

A family moves the figures more than the city does: an AD5 with a spouse and two children takes home roughly €1,900 more in Brussels than a single AD5, mostly from the household, child and education allowances.

Does a higher coefficient mean a better life?

Not by design. The coefficient exists so that the same grade buys roughly the same standard of living anywhere in the EU. In practice, candidates weigh other things:

• Housing. The coefficient follows a basket of prices, and rent is only part of it. Luxembourg shares Brussels’s 100, but housing there is noticeably more expensive, which many staff mention when they compare the two.
• Schools. The European Schools give children of EU staff free schooling in their own language. Brussels and Luxembourg have several, and a number of agency cities have one too, or an accredited school that follows the same programme.
• Career. Brussels has by far the most posts, so moving between jobs is easiest there. A post at an agency is often the only EU job in that city.
• Saving. If you plan to spend your salary somewhere else later, a high coefficient is not an advantage: it compensates for local prices that you pay while you are there.

Work out your own figure

The EU salary calculator runs the same calculation for any grade from AST1 to AD16, any step, all 27 duty stations, with or without a household, children and the expatriation allowance. For what comes on top of the salary — the European Schools, relocation, pension — read EU official salary and benefits; for how grades and contracts compare, AD vs AST vs CAST and EU grades AD5 and AD7 explained.

Frequently asked questions

Salary grid, allowances and correction coefficients in force from 1 July 2025 (Official Journal C/2025/6564), as on 30 October 2026. Net figures are estimates; your institution confirms the exact amounts.