EXCLUSIVE

FIVE Brussels-based Scots have emerged as contenders for two plum European Union jobs to be filled in Edinburgh later this year.

The five are in the running for the posts of representatives in Scotland of the European Commission and European Parliament. The commission job has been held by Ken Munro for the past 10 years and the parliament job is a new post being established partly in response to the coming of the Scottish Parliament.

Mr Munro is retiring later this year from the commission, although no date for his departure has yet been specified.

The commission post is the senior of the two and carries a salary which is assessed in Belgian francs and at today's exchange rate starts at #55,000, rising to #75,000.

Eurocrats in Brussels expect that the Alva Street offices of the commission in Edinburgh's West End will house the parliamentary office.

The parliamentary post was agreed by the European Parliament's executive bureau earlier this year. One of its members is David Martin, a vice president of the parliament, who is also Labour Euro-MP for Lothians, and who hailed the presence of a parliamentary officer in the capital as a ''great day for devolution to Scotland and Edinburgh'' which would put Edinburgh on a par with Barcelona, Marseilles and Milan.

The parliamentary post will be temporary at first but will be reviewed and probably made permanent after the European elections in June next year. Making it permanent would reflect the increasing importance being placed on regional affairs by the European Union.

Among the Eurocrats mooted in Brussels is Roderick Skinner who works on social policy and specialises in the integration of the disabled. Mr Skinner is also heavily involved in the Scottish European Association, which was set up six years ago to improve and promote Scottish relations with the EU.

Tony O'Donnell works for the commission where he is in charge of audio visual services. He was a journalist with BBC Scotland until his move to Brussels where he works on electronic media coverage of European summits and other major meetings. His wife, Lesley, is the daughter of a former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Very Rev Professor James Whyte.

Fraser Cameron is a former contributor to The Herald who has worked for the commission in Europe for many years, first in East Germany during the Communist period and later in the Brussels cabinet of the former commission president, Jacques Delors. Mr Cameron is now working on the EU's ambitious enlargement programme which involves negotiations with the former Communist states of Eastern Europe. He had previously considered standing for the Scottish Parliament but decided not to pursue nomination.

Dius Lennon worked for Bruce Millan, the former Scottish Secretary who became European regional affairs commissioner. Mr Lennon was the Eurocrat who worked most closely on Scotland's successful submissions for EU structural funding which were agreed at the Edinburgh summit in 1992. He now works with consumer affairs commissioner Emma Bonino.

Alistair Stewart, who works in Sir Leon Brittan's cabinet, is the Eurocrat who led the EU's legal challenge to Norway on behalf of Scottish and Irish farmers during the so-called salmon war. His job involves anti-dumping investigations and trade agreements involving contravention of subsidy rules.

The commission job will be advertised internally only but the parliamentary post will be advertised generally.