“The wage of the president should decline as much as that of public servants and ministers,” Ilves said in a statement on his Web site today. Ilves earns seven times the average monthly salary, which was 13,117 krooni ($1,144) in the three months to December 2008.

Prime Minister Andrus Ansip’s government has agreed to cut wages at all ministries by 8 percent from July as it seeks to lower the fiscal deficit to meet euro-entry terms by the end of the year and avoid depleting government reserves.

The Baltic country is in its worst recession since regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 as the collapse of a lending and construction boom following European Union entry in 2004 is compounded by the global credit freeze.