Last week, Brussels was startled by a remarkable move by the French-speaking Brussels parties MR, Les Engagés and the PS.
After a joint consultation without any Dutch-speaking parties involved, they announced bluntly that they wanted to postpone the Brussels LEZ (Low Emission Zone) by two years.
For the Dutch-speaking formateur Elke Van den Brandt (Groen), this amounted to a major breach of trust. This key achievement of the Greens was thus pushed aside without much further ado.
Until recently, the three French-speaking parties actually did not have a majority in the Brussels parliament with just 44 out of 89 seats. But just last Monday an elected member of Défi promptly switched to MR so solve that issue. Pure francophone powerplay.
As a reminder, the Brussels government requires a majority on both sides. However, many laws can be voted in parliament without a double majority. Almost 100 days after the elections, a Dutch-speaking majority is still not in sight.
Formateur Elke Van den Brandt first bet everything on a smooth continuation of the current coalition Groen-Open VLD-Vooruit, supplemented with CD&V. However, this route proved to be unfeasible because it was quite naive to think that Benjamin Dalle (CD&V) would simply come and save the incumbent coalition that he had fought for five years.
The motto of the previous government looked a lot like Flemish singer Raymond van het Groenewoud's brilliant onliner from his song Brussels by night: “The stad die iedereen wil helpen, maar dan liefst om zeep” (“The city everyone wants to help, but preferably to ruin”).
All eyes on N-VA
Meanwhile, eyes have finally turned to the N-VA as a possible government partner, but that won't be a walk in the park either. Some members of parliament for Groen already threatened to vote against such coalition.
The elephant in the room however is the disastrous Brussels budget. Nobody knows how to ever get back on track. The cost of the Metro 3 project exploded from 1 to 4 billion euro and the end does not seem to be in sight yet.
Meanwhile, it also turned out that other budgets were way underestimated. The money for the Renolution renovation grants and the export subsidies already ran out halfway through the year. In addition, the water company Vivaqua is carrying an ever-increasing debt of more than one billion euro. Who knows what corpses are still hidden in the Brussels cupboards.
This also raises a crucial question for N-VA. Does the party actually have any political interest in participating in a Brussels government? It would certainly be nice for the deserving Brussels leader Cieltje Van Achter to finally hold an executive mandate, but is it worth it if you have to join a government that in all likelihood will not succeed in turning the tide?
The Greens (Groen) wants to continue to invest in mobility infrastructure and PS/Vooruit want higher social investments because the social housing fund has also run out of money. Of course, the MR and les Engagés will also want to finance their preferred projects.
Finally, with Open VLD you have a partner on the Flemish with an awful track record for budgetary discipline. In fact, it was the Open VLD minister of Budget Sven Gatz who oversaw the complete budget mess last term, claiming during the full 5 years that the budget would be balanced by 2024. Well, it is not, expenses exceed revenue by a whopping 18,5%.
The conclusion then is that neither N-VA nor CD&V, with just 2 and 1 seats respectively out of 89, can effectively weigh in on Brussels policy. Therefore, they had better let this chalice pass them by.
That leaves formateur Van Den Brandt with only one route left, the Groen -Vooruit - Team Fouad Ahidar route, which has a narrow majority of 9 seats out of 17 on the Dutch speaking side. Several francophone parties actually already expressed their veto against Team Fouad Ahidar, but legally there is nothing they can do.
Van den Brandt will not find many supporters for the LEZ and Good Move there either, but an honorable compromise may still be possible. For example, one could keep the LEZ, but still allow Diesel 5 cars to drive once a week without imposing fines. One could also double the Brussel´air grant for those vehicles from 1000 euros for mobility services to 2000 euros cash to convince those people to give up their cars anyway.
Brussels going bankrupt
However, these issues all seem futile discussions in light of the budgetary challenge facing Brussels. It is more than likely that a motley coalition of 6 parties, all of whom would prefer to spend more money, will not straighten out the budget.
This will send the Brussels Region into a vicious spiral of deteriorating ratings and rising interest charges. It is quite cynical, but for both N-VA and CD&V, it may be more politically more interesting to let the French-speaking parties deal with Team Fouad Ahidar instead, rather than to co-govern themselves.
If MR and Les Engagés manage to revitalize Wallonia over the next 5 years, they can also easily blame the Brussels fiasco on the PS, who would be governing in Brussels but not in Wallonia. Thus, by 2029 we may end up in a much more interesting scenario for both N-VA and CD&V. A Brussels region that has gone completely bankrupt could become the lever to achieve a major state reform immediately after a Belgian party in 2030 (200 years of independence) just to keep up appearances for a while longer.
In the end, everything comes back in Belgian politics. The Flemish actually always opposed the creation of the Brussels Region since the 1970s, but had no choice but to finally accept it in 1989. The fragile balances that were thereby established for the protection of the Dutch-speaking minority are barely respected by French-speaking politicians today.
The budget negotiations in recent weeks have taken place without a Dutch-speaking majority, the LEZ could be abolished unilaterally by French-speaking parties and there has never been any real bilingualism in public services.
Moreover, 3 of the 17 Dutch-speaking seats were “hijacked” by Team Fouad Ahidar with a predominantly French-speaking electorate.
The French-speaking pursuit of a Brussels as “région à part entière” is now in danger of crashing into a deep fiscal cliff. This is not surprising, because the Brussels Region lacks a broad fiscal base.
Too many residents live in poverty paying no taxes at all, and the same applies for European bureaucrats and international diplomats. In addition, about four hundred thousand commuters work here but pay taxes in Flanders and Wallonia.
The result could then well be Brussels as a “région entièrement à part” that will only prove viable by grace of and with financial support from Flanders, the only region with a solid budget.
In the past, it was always the federal state that came to the rescue, but this does no longer seem politically feasible. The federal budget has been governed to ruins as well and needs a huge effort to get back on track itself. Finally, with N-VA as the dominant force of the next federal government, it is highly unlikely that additional financing for Brussels will be provided.
