The investigation commission in the Brussels Parliament, responsible for studying the circumstances of the damage to the capital's tunnels decided, on Wednesday to postpone for a week the debate that it was supposed to be having upon the recommendations formulated by the various political groups. These had not been prepared in their entirety in the set time-scale. The aim is to take this debate as far as possible during this last meeting before the Easter holiday. One, even two further meetings, may yet take place after the Easter break.
It was agreed at the end of the commission's recent meeting, which was devoted to hearing the views of the three ex Minister-Presidents, that next Wednesday the debate around the proposed recommendations that various political groups were intended to submit will start.
Ecolo (the francophone and German-speaking Green party), Groen (the Flemish-speaking Green party) and the N-VA (the New Flemish Alliance) had, in fact, submitted their recommendations within the deadline. However, the MR (the main Liberal party) has not yet submitted written conclusions.
The leader of the Liberal party gave an explanation mentioning the late arrival of the responses to a string of questions from the private operator Egis (editor's note: which arrived on Tuesday) and not having heard the Minister-Presidents' views until Wednesday.
Mr De Wolf said he was ready for a discussion without any further delay, on the basis of the recommendations of other groups, and the unwritten one of his group. However, it seems that in the majority, nobody is ready to take this up. They all fear finding themselves in the situation of the player who shows his hand to his opponent, who categorically makes a point of not showing his own.
After a pause in the meeting, it was agreed to extend the deadline for submission of proposed recommendations until Friday afternoon and thus to delay the start of initial exchanges of views until next Wednesday.
(Source :Belga)
