After the painful but predictable failure of the fiscal negotiations, the idea of Vivaldi as a reform government may be shelved for good. That was never actually the case. Even if one has one great ‘luck’.
Back to October 1, 2020, the day on which Alexander De Croo (Open Vld) takes the oath as prime minister. After fifteen months of crisis, our country finally has a government. Not purple-yellow (with PS and N-VA), but Vivaldi. A new story, says one. An ideological mishmash, the other judges.
Despite the fact that the corona crisis is still raging at the end of 2020 – we will then be at the beginning of the second wave – the seven new government parties express the ambition to thoroughly reform Belgium by 2030, when the country celebrates its bicentenary. Open Vld chairman Egbert Lachaert, among others, made it clear from the start of Vivaldi that it is a project that was made for ten years.
“In Vivaldi we will not be allowed to damage each other, otherwise it will end badly for all of us,” says Lachaert. “We have built up trust with seven”, assures his CD&V colleague Joachim Coens.
Three years later, Lachaert and Coens have disappeared from the scene (chased away, they may judge themselves). Fortunately, the corona virus has died down, but the ten-year reform project and the unspoken agreement to continue with Vivaldi after the election are also off the radar. At ‘Talent wins games, teamwork wins championships’De Croo’s slogan when he took office, is only remembered with slight embarrassment.
Mister tax shift
The failure of the tax negotiations on Tuesday is painful and predictable. Painful because De Croo has seemingly tirelessly done everything in recent days to get the planned reform over the line before the national holiday. He fulfills his promise – a perk for all those who work from 2024 – not after. A disappointment for the Prime Minister whose success in next year’s elections will be closely linked to the performance of his government.
Also for Minister of Finance Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V) – ‘mister taxshift’ so to speak – jumping off the talks means a loss of face. In consultation with his party leadership, Van Peteghem has put a lot of effort into reducing the burden. In May, cd&v launched a ‘more net website’ on which everyone could calculate how many hundreds of euros Van Peteghem’s tax futures would generate for him or her.
The failure of the negotiations is predictable because within Vivaldi the question of what a tax reform should entail is answered completely differently.
The right – led by MR and Georges-Louis Bouchez – favors an operation that finances the promised net profit for workers with a series of tax hikes elsewhere. This creates a budgetary gap, which must be filled in view of the worrying state of the budget. Otherwise, financial disaster threatens after 2024. But the left refuses to fill this gap with the labor market reforms demanded by the right.
The fact that Vivaldi relies on a coalition agreement that was written in six weeks in the autumn of 2020 and therefore excels in vagueness in areas such as taxation, the labor market and pensions does not help. (It is immediately the reason why the pension reforms of last and this summer turned out to be modest. More is not feasible with a PS that camps on the agreements made at the time.) The fact that the June 2024 elections are gradually looming on the horizon does not make things any easier either.
Given the proximity of the elections, it should come as no surprise that Bouchez and MR issued a firm ‘non’ against tax increases on Monday. That refusal is well founded Fressen for his supporters: anyone who is right-wing and enterprising in French-speaking Belgium, an electoral group that only he serves. At Open Vld one has to grit one’s teeth and watch how stokebrand Bouchez now scores with all kinds of – mostly dark blue – Flemish opinion makers.
Perhaps it is also no coincidence that CD&V has not yet taken its multi-net website offline despite the hopelessly outdated profit that visitors are presented with. Van Peteghem’s original proposal – a tax exercise of 6 billion euros – will soon become an important campaign theme. In that sense, CD&V will not be too sad that a light tax reduction of 2 billion euros is now off the table. In times of inflation, the question arose whether it had seduced more than a handful of voters.
Iron
Vivaldi has one ‘luck’: the centre-right government in Flanders is also dragging itself more dead than alive into its last year of work. This ideologically coherent team also has all the trouble in the world to write a compelling story. Some of the criticism from N-VA, the largest opposition party, rings so hollow.
As far as the Flemish government is concerned, it is worth repeating how far the former cartel partners N-VA and CD&V have drifted apart in recent years. The coalition has reached a point where no one is really surprised that Minister Jo Brouns (CD&V) refused on Friday to give his colleague Zuhal Demir (N-VA) the green light for the elaboration of a crucial nitrogen agreement. Even after government leader Jan Jambon (N-VA) personally gave him the guarantee that his demands will be seriously investigated.
De Wetstraat leaves on holiday with a suitcase overflowing with worries and frustrations. Less than a year before the election, caretaker management beckons for Vivaldi. And for Jambon I.
