Social stakeholders and civil society actors will gather at the Federation Wallonia-Brussels Parliament on Tuesday to demand renewed funding for childcare services, opposing planned budget cuts by the government (MR-Les Engagés).
The action will begin at 8:30 outside the Parliament on Rue Royale in Brussels. It will bring together Christian, Socialist, and Liberal unions, as well as sectoral federations such as Unessa and File.
Coordinating organisations including the Federation of Maternal and Child Services (FSMI), the Federation of Francophone Homework Schools (FFEDD), and the Coordination of Childcare Services of the FWB (Cosege) will also participate, alongside civil society organisations such as the League of Families, the Walloon Anti-Poverty Network, Vie Féminine, and Soralia, a feminist movement affiliated with Solidaris.
Participants plan to attend the presentation of a Court of Audit report at 9:00, which will examine the progress of childcare availability in French-speaking Belgium. They aim to highlight the severe consequences of the planned austerity measures to MPs.
In October, the MR-Les Engagés coalition proposed budget cuts of €74 million starting in 2026 within the childcare sector, which includes the Office of Birth and Childhood (ONE) and crèches. Subsidies to providers will not be indexed, and a promised increase in staff-to-child ratios—raising the number of caregivers assigned to groups of seven children from one to 1.5—has been shelved.
The sector warns that these measures will result in reduced operating hours, higher financial contributions from parents, job losses, increased workloads for already strained workers, and the potential closure of structures reliant on subsidies, such as home-based childcare services.
Stakeholders have repeatedly raised concerns in recent years about worsening work conditions, staff shortages, and chronic underfunding. They say these challenges force them to rely on inadequate resources to care for a particularly vulnerable segment of the population—young children.
