WRAPUP 1-Euro ministers urge wage restraint, from CEOs too

(Updates after news conference)

By Brian Love and Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS, May 14 (Reuters) - Excessive pay awards are not an answer to surging food and fuel prices and may worsen inflation, euro zone finance ministers said on Tuesday.

What goes for employees applies equally to corporate bosses, whose often-vast payments were a "social scourge", Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of discussions among the ministers of the 15 euro zone countries in Brussels, told a news conference.

"The excesses of captains of industry that we have seen in several countries, in several sectors in the euro area, are really quite scandalous," Juncker said.

Europe would look into ways of toughening taxation of "golden handshakes" and other sometimes unjustified payments to CEOs, he said.

The ministers took stock of economic prospects, including a prediction from European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia that euro zone growth was likely to slow after a fairly solid first quarter of 2008, before picking up again in 2009.

Europe's economy was in nothing like the state of its flagging U.S. counterpart, even if the surge in the price of oil and food as well as the turmoil in financial markets posed a threat, said German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck.

"We have very robust economic development in Europe. We are better organised, better structured compared to the U.S.," the minister told reporters.