Setting maximum salaries for senior civil servants threatens the quality of the government aparatus, central bank president Nout Wellink was quoted as saying in Friday’s Financieele Dagblad.

The current system does not allow the government to attract and keep top staff, Wellink said. The private sector attracts the ‘best and the brightest’, Wellink was quoted as saying. But it is important that the best people are also attracted to work in, for example, the health service or finance ministry, Wellink said.
The government has a ceiling of €170,000 for senior civil service pay, in line with the package earned by prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende.