After two weeks of Flemish Easter vacations followed by a short work week, it was the French-speakers' turn to take things just a little easier for two weeks.
The no longer coinciding school vacations are an annoyance and inconvenience for many, especially in Brussels, and at the same time the perfect illustration of the parallel universes in which the political protagonists seem to operate today.
In recent weeks, the great George-Louis Bouchez was still trying to put together a minority government, but no one quite understood what exactly he was trying to achieve. En passant, an MR MP switched to the PS and Défi also lost another MP. Fabian Maingain quit the party and was seen a little later at the launch of “Lib.res,” the new party of father Olivier Maingain, who is desperately trying to stay relevant with this new initiative.
For Maingain, the big existential problem is not the Brussels Region's staggering budget deficit and exploding debt, but rather Flemish nationalism targeting French speakers.
On Bruzz's counter, the Brussels debt simultaneously exceeded the symbolic threshold of 15 billion euros. At the current rate of an annual deficit of 1.6 billion euros, we will reach the 20 billion mark in 2028, equivalent to more than 300% of annual revenues. All without Flemish-Nationalists in the Brussels government.
Meanwhile, the city council of Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, home of Mayor Maingain, has officially branded N-VA as an extreme right-wing party. Since the current prime minister, Bart De Wever, is the leader of that “racist” party, we now impatientely await this municipalit's declaration of independence.
Meanwhile, Brussels vaudeville can keep the attention of fewer and fewer Brusseleers because the situation is so completely hopeless. The PS stubbornly holds out with its veto against the N-VA, Open VLD does not want to take a bath without the N-VA and the MR itself, meanwhile, no longer wants to form a government with the PS.
Rien ne va plus. Budget Minister Sven Gatz occasionally launches a proposal to save a few millions here and there, hoping to please the rating agency Standard and Poor's when they give their verdict on the Brussels financial situation in early June. Mere drops in the budgetary ocean, because any mini-savings will immediately be wiped out by rising interest charges.
The big picture
The bigger picture is that the Brussels imbroglio makes a deep Belgian systemic crisis inevitable in the next few years. The Brussels Region can only be saved by federal intervention, but also the French community is on dry ice.
During the latest budget conclave, an additional deficit of 350 million euros per year was discovered. This comes on top of a structural deficit of almost 1.3 billion euros on revenues of just 13.5 billion euros.
Since the communities in our country have no fiscal competence, only an adaptation of the Special Finance Act can provide a solution. Indeed, cutting the salaries of French-speaking teaching staff by 10% seems like political science fiction and electoral suicide for MR and Les Engagés.
But also Wallonia is sinking further into a budgetary quagmire. Although the new Walloon government made a number of budget cuts in its adminstration, it immediately reduced registration fees for home buyers by almost the same amount.
On top of all this, the impact of the federal measures still needs to be added, such as limiting unemployment over time, which will hit Wallonia and Brussels proportionally hard.
Also, the extinction of the federal solidarity mechanism will cost Brussels and Wallonia more money each year starting this year. A balanced budget was at best only foreseen for 2034 anyway. Even that seems unachievable.
Meanwhile, the persistent budget deficits have been piling up for years, leading to sharply increased debts in all federal entities. In the coming years, both the Brussels-Capital Region, the Walloon Region and the French community will be increasingly confronted with a growing interest snowball.
According to a memo of October 2024 from the Brussels Regional Development Commission, interest charges in Brussels will rise from 334 million euros in the coming years to 548 million euros in 2029. With a rating downgrade, that amount could even exceed 600 million euros per year.
However, a modification of the Special Finance Act implies a two-thirds majority in the federal parliament as well as a majority in each linguistic group. The latter is exactly where things have been faltering in Brussels for almost a year now, which is a foreshadowing of what awaits us federally.
Meanwhile, on the Flemish side, almost all parties have been forced to revolve like satellites around the N-VA. On the French-speaking side, however, the PS remains indispensable for a state reform, while it continues to radicalize under pressure from the PTB. Even without the increased polarization, water and fire remain irreconcilable.
Everyone sees that the current structures and especially the financial flows are leading straight to the abyss. But at the same time, there is no majority to be found for any state reform. The N-VA will not accept anything less than confederalism, which remains imbuvable for the French-speakers, but also for several Flemish parties. An unseen systemic crisis with no exit.
Thus, this Kingdom is in danger of complete gridlock by 2030, with effective “shutdowns” of certain federal entities no longer to be ruled out. The 541 days of negotiations from 2010-2011 will be remembered as playful folklore compared to the grimness that awaits us after 2029.
The absurdity to which this country has a patent may well take the form of endless castle talks on the financing of bankrupt federal entities on the 200th anniversary of Belgium while the De Wever I government, led by a Flemish nationalist, has to keep an eye on the equally bankrupt Belgian store.
Perhaps, then, it is not so absurd after all that the Dutch Chamber President recently had a conversation with the French ambassador about the division of Belgium?
