They have a luxury supermarket solely for their own use and a brand of champagne bottled specially for them. And with a salary scale that rises well above $100,000 a year, Commission officials can afford many of life's more expensive pleasures.
To be fair, most of the 22,000-odd Commission staff work hard at the unglamorous task of keeping the European Union in business. And although they are better paid than civil servants in most member-states, most could earn more in the private sector.
In an attempt to halt the drift of the Commission's brightest officials, the Commissioner in charge of Administrative Reform, Neil Kinnock, has unveiled a radical reform of staff pay and conditions. Staff who perform well will be paid more and promotion will be on the basis of merit rather than time served.
Mr Kinnock claims that the changes will increase promotions for the average official and allow people to move more quickly on the basis of their performance. But unions representing European public servants are outraged and have threatened to strike unless Mr Kinnock waters down his plans.
Among Mr Kinnock's more headline-grabbing proposals is a plan to close the Economat, as the Commission supermarket is called, and to abolish the "typing allowance" that nine out of 10 Commission secretaries claim.
Mr Kinnock wants to scrap the free first-class train trip home that each official enjoys every year and to replace it with a mileage allowance. And he plans to overhaul the system whereby officials can double their salaries - apart from inflation increases - within 14 years without getting promoted.
Commission officials are, naturally enough, unhappy at the prospect of losing their perks. But their main complaint about Mr Kinnock's proposals is that they will reward the better-paid and discriminate against those lower down the scale.
One union leader described the reform package as "a mixture of snakes and ladders and musical chairs" that would result in officials earning less than before. And staff fear that basing promotion on merit could mean that staff would face permanent, cut-throat competition.
The collapse of the last Commission amid allegations of nepotism and corruption made some reform of the administration inevitable. But it is far from certain that Mr Kinnock's plans will succeed in tackling the Commission's biggest problem - a serious shortage of staff.
Much of the Commission's work is out-sourced to specialist consultancies - often headed by former officials. But the charges of croneyism levelled at the last Commission have made Brussels more cautious about which consultancies it employs, creating bottlenecks and delays as consultants are obliged to bid again for contracts they thought they had secured.
Unions representing Commission staff argue that the reforms will simply create a new tier of bureaucracy and could demoralise staff even further. Other critics complain that, although performance-related pay is common in private enterprise, it may not be appropriate for the Commission.
As the body that proposes EU policies, the Commission needs creative thinkers, many of whom cannot be assessed according to standard performance criteria. And there is no guarantee that offering extra pay to the most talented will prevent them from leaving Brussels as soon as they have gained a marketable level of expertise in the workings of the EU.
Mr Kinnock has agreed to negotiate with unions before his reforms are finalised and there is little danger of strike action before the summer.
The key to improving staff morale and performance may have less to do with pay, promotions and perks than with the actions of the Commission itself. Many officials are, contrary to the popular myth, idealists who are committed to realising a vision of European unity.
But as they watch the EU's image becoming ever more tarnished, many staff blame their bosses, the 20 Commissioners, for the Union's unpopularity. As Romano Prodi and his colleagues promise to bring Europe closer to the people, perhaps it is they rather than their staff who should be paid according to their performance.
Oddly enough, it is not an idea that appears to have occurred to Mr Kinnock.
