Salaries & Benefits

Six employers, one method, six different scales.

The OECD, NATO, the Council of Europe, ESA, ECMWF and EUMETSAT are the Co-ordinated Organisations. Their salaries move together each year under a single method, administered from Paris — but each publishes its own ladder, on its own basis, in its own currencies. Knowing that a job is at one of the six tells you how its pay is set. It does not tell you what it pays. That is on each employer's own page below.

The six

Between them they employ more than 20,000 staff across 57 member countries. Every one of them advertises here, and each links to what it actually publishes.

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Based
Paris
Grades
EL, PAL, CF and GA job families, plus a legacy A/L/B/C scale
20 open vacancies How it pays →

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Based
12 published countries
Grades
a single spine, G1 to G24
69 open vacancies How it pays →

Council of Europe

Based
Strasbourg and 7 more countries
Grades
C, B, L and A grades
13 open vacancies How it pays →

ESA

European Space Agency

Based
8 published countries
Grades
G, B and A grades
30 open vacancies How it pays →

ECMWF

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

Based
Reading, Bologna and Bonn
Grades
C, B, L and A grades
2 open vacancies How it pays →

EUMETSAT

European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites

Based
Darmstadt
Grades
C, B, L and A grades
7 open vacancies How it pays →
OECD jobs (20) NATO jobs (69) Council of Europe jobs (13) ESA jobs (30) ECMWF jobs (2) EUMETSAT jobs (7)

What is actually coordinated

The coordination is of method, not of amounts. A body called the Co-ordinating Committee on Remuneration agrees how salaries move; the International Service for Remunerations and Pensions — the ISRP, in Paris — does the statistical work behind it and administers the pension arrangements. What comes out is not one salary table but a rule that each of the six then applies to its own.

Shared across all six

  • One annual adjustment methodSalaries are reviewed once a year against cost-of-living movement and reference civil service pay in the host countries, rather than negotiated employer by employer.
  • Internal tax, then exemptionStaff pay an internal tax to the organisation and are then exempt from national income tax in member states. A figure from one of the six is not comparable with a private-sector gross salary.
  • Country-differentiated payThe same grade is deliberately paid differently in each country, tracking local costs — not a post adjustment on top of a single base, which is how the UN does it.
  • Expatriation and family allowancesPaid on top of the scale where personal circumstances qualify, and assessed at recruitment and periodically after.
  • A common pension frameworkThe Co-ordinated Organisations' pension scheme rules are agreed jointly and administered through the ISRP.

Different at every one

  • The grade ladderNATO runs a single 24-grade spine. ESA uses G, B and A. The Council of Europe, ECMWF and EUMETSAT use C, B, L and A. The OECD has moved most posts to job families — PAL, CF, GA, EL. A grade letter means nothing without knowing the employer.
  • What the published figure meansESA and the Council of Europe publish net monthly salary, after tax and pension come off. ECMWF, EUMETSAT and the OECD publish basic salary. The same number is not the same money.
  • Steps, or no stepsSome publish only the first step of each grade; others publish the whole ladder up to a top step reached on years of service.
  • Country coverageECMWF publishes three countries, EUMETSAT four, ESA eight, the OECD essentially one. A country the employer does not publish has no figure — not a borrowed one.
  • When it takes effectAdjustment dates differ, so two of the six can be on scales a year apart at the moment you compare them.

Reading an offer from one of the six

Three things decide what a Co-ordinated Organisation vacancy is worth, and only the first is on the advert. The grade tells you the rung. The country of work tells you which of that employer's scales applies — not where the organisation is headquartered, but where the post sits. The basis tells you whether the published number is before or after deductions, which is the difference that most often makes two offers look closer than they are.

Where a vacancy advertises a band rather than a single grade — ESA's A2–A4, the Council of Europe's A1/A2 — the rung is decided at recruitment on years of relevant experience, and both organisations publish the thresholds they use.

These are not UN common-system salaries. There is no ICSC scale and no post adjustment behind any of these grades, so a Co-ordinated Organisation A4 cannot be read against a P-4 without accounting for the difference in basis and in how each system handles location. How UN pay works · Build a UN salary in the calculator
Every figure on the six pages is reproduced from that organisation's own published document, with its effective date and a link to the source. UNjobnet is not affiliated with any of them; the organisations' own documents are authoritative and can change without notice.