It's a common misunderstanding that the apanage is the royal's salary. That is not the case.
The apanage is to cover the expenses of the individual royal (in QMII and Frederik's case the whole court) including "salary".
Now if we look at the info in this post:
http://www.theroyalforums.com/forum...he-danish-royal-family-15571.html#post1863226
And apply them to PH. Then we can roughly assume that one fifth of PH's apanage constitute his salary.
Okay PH receive roughly 8 million DKK. One fifth of that is roughly 1.5 million DKK, that's not a lot for a man in his position, but he doesn't pay taxes, including vat.
And apart from a secretary and a valet he doesn't need to pay for additional staff. The driver, cleaners, cooks, footmen, advisors and so on are paid for by the court as a whole and that's QMII responsibility.
Nor does he need to pay for the upkeep of the palaces, furnishing, equipment, heating and so on.
The only expenses he has is travel expenses for his staff, including food and hotel bills and other day-to-day expenses.
Let's be generous and estimate that the salary for his valet and secretary working full time constitute 500.000 DKK each, including basic salary, overtime, insurance, pension, vacation and so on. That's one million DKK
Okay, PH apanage is 8 million DKK.
Minus salary: 1.5 million DKK.
Minus staff: One million DKK
As far as I can figure out that leaves roughly 5.5 million DKK for additional expenses, including travelling. - Keep in mind that PH according to this estimate is only paying for himself out of his own pocket. At reduced prices because he is not paying vat.
5.5 million DKK - for what? Now that he has officially retired.
So either some of that money is channeled back to QMII to cover the general expenses of the court or - What? Going into the piggy-bank?
The piggy-bank will soon be bursting!
To put it into perspective: For 5.5. million DKK after tax Mrs Muhler and I could live a
very comfortable middle class life for eleven years. Without working. And if we didn't eat caviar more than once a week, we should
easily be able to stretch that to fifteen years. (Including two brand new suitcases and tents for our children, so they have a good start in life... This estimate is for two adults).
So IMO a 50 % cut in PH's apanage is not unreasonable. I just believe the money should be transferred to QMII and not the state coffer.