Local councils must make remunerations paid to councillors public

Publiceret 14-05-2024

According to the Local Government Act, the local councils must make public the amount of the remunerations that councillors are paid for performing external duties that they have by virtue of their membership of the local council, for instance a position on the board of a company.

The Ombudsman became involved in the matter due to a complaint from a journalist that the City of Copenhagen, in the journalist’s opinion, made public remuneration rates for the duties of the City Council members in a way that made it impossible to calculate how large a sum the individual member of the City Council had actually been paid.

The Ombudsman states that the local councils are obligated to make public the remuneration that have actually been paid to the councillors. It is not sufficient to declare for instance a general hourly rate for a given remuneration if you do not simultaneously disclose the number of hours used.

‘The purpose of the rules is to create transparency and visibility for the public about the remunerations that the councillors receive. The local councils must therefore make public the remunerations that a councillor has actually received and been paid’, says Parliamentary Ombudsman Niels Fenger.

The Ministry of the Interior and Health has now contacted the City of Copenhagen concerning the its publication of remunerations, and the City of Copenhagen has stated that it will make public the amount of the remunerations in accordance with the above-mentioned rules.

Read Case No. FOB 2024-16 (in Danish only).

 

Further details:

Director of International Relations Klavs Kinnerup Hede, e-mail: kkh@ombudsmanden.dk

Facts

Section 16 e of the Local Government Act has the following wording:

‘A councillor performing duties other than membership of committees or subcommittees set up by the local council upon election or recommendation by the local government shall disclose to the local council the total remuneration received in the previous calendar year for performing such duties. Before the end of the first quarter of any year, the local council shall make public which councillors were remunerated for performing such duties as well as the amount of the remuneration for the individual duties performed by each councillor in the last calendar year.’