Engerer defends €85,000 posting as sherpa to Muscat

Former Labour candidate Cyrus Engerer has not denied taking an €85,000 salary to act as the Prime Minister’s so called 'sherpa' in Brussels.

Engerer, a one-time deputy mayor in Sliema for the Nationalist Party who later defected to Labour, defended his posting at the permanent representation to the EU where he accompanies Joseph Muscat to each European Council meeting.

“I’m accredited to the Council of the European Union and every necessary screening for accreditation has been made. Many permanent representations have the role of the Sherpa, who is the personal representative of the Prime Minister to the European institutions,” Engerer said on his Facebook wall in a reaction to a story published in The Times.

Details of Engerer’s salary were given in parliament by Joseph Muscat, who said that Engerer was his special envoy on a Scale 3 salary, which is tagged at €34,680.

The government has not denied that his salary also comes with financial allowances of some €50,000, details of which were not mentioned in the reply to the PQ.

Engerer becomes Labour's latest 'expensive car', the soubriquet earned by former MEPA chairman Austin Walker when he had to defend his €93,000 salary.

Engerer occupies a high-level post in the EU as one of the prime minister’s closest aides while in Brussels.

But many euro-sherpas tend to be former diplomats and civil servants who worked inside the European institutions.

Engerer ran for MEP on the Labour ticket in 2014, but had to withdraw his candidature when he was found guilty of for the distribution of pornography – namely compromising images of a former partner – for which he received a two-year suspended sentence.

He was an EU funds manager who after Labour’s election to power was posted to two positions of trust in the ministry for civil liberties and the Office of the Prime Minister.

After his conviction, Muscat dubbed Engerer a “soldier of steel” during a public meeting, recruiting him as his advisor on EU affairs and later posting him to Brussels.