“We start from the child,” CD&V chairman Sammy Mahdi explains his “family credit”. In this proposed system, every child is assigned a ‘backpack’ at birth with days off that can be divided among parents, plus parents or grandparents, regardless of whether they are self-employed, employees or workers.
In concrete terms, the plan provides thirty weeks of maternity leave per child. These must be consumed in the first three years of life, instead of within four months as is currently the case. A parent can stay with them for a maximum of eighteen weeks. Maternity leave now lasts a maximum of fifteen weeks.
For a father or co-parent, maternity leave could increase to twelve weeks, compared to four now. Free weeks can be mutually agreed upon. Parents can therefore also choose to stay at home for fifteen weeks each.
During those thirty weeks, the loss of income must remain minimal, CD&V states. The benefits must therefore amount to 82 percent of the (capped) gross salary during the full thirty weeks, instead of only during the first four weeks. On an average, a mother would receive around 300 euros extra per month. For one parent, this is “a spectacular increase”, it sounds.
The current system of eight months of parental leave remains intact in the CD&V scenario. The party does want to increase the reimbursements for this by 40 percent. In absolute figures this amounts to 366.44 euros per month for those who work full-time. Too many parents are now ignoring parental leave because the drop in income is too great, says CD&V.
In addition to more days off and better compensation, the party also advocates more flexibility. For example, the maternity leave in the CD&V proposal can be included for three years. The party also wants to make parental leave possible until the child’s eighteenth birthday, instead of until the age of twelve. Because parents also have an important role during puberty, says Flemish Member of Parliament Katrien Schryvers. To keep the entire system under control, the party wants to limit the time credit for child care to ten months.
Burn-outs
The Christian Democrats want to take the pressure off parents with their reforms. “The PS advocates a 32-hour week. Open VLD wants working weeks of up to 48 hours. We see it differently: a country where people work hard, but where people at the same time have the time to be there for their children,” says Mahdi. He hopes, among other things, to reduce the number of parental burnouts. “Research shows that one in twelve parents worldwide suffers from such a burnout. Our country is one of the leaders in this.”
CD&V has a lot of money left over for all that. The cost of the thirty weeks of leave with higher benefits is estimated at 280 million euros per year. The party provides an annual injection of 130 million for other parental leave. So a total invoice of 410 million euros. By limiting the time credit system, the party expects as much as 70 million euros in income.
This is not about exact mathematics, CD&V emphasizes. “For example, payback effects are not taken into account,” says MP Nathalie Muylle. The party refers to the higher productivity in Scandinavian countries. Because parents experience fewer burnouts, more people would also remain in the labor market in the longer term.
The scheme should help to achieve the target of 80 percent employment, it sounds. Other labor market reforms, such as limiting unemployment benefits over time, should also make family credit financially viable.
“The budgets are estimates based on birth rates. We don’t think everyone will take the maximum number of weeks. But we do want to offer the option,” says Muylle. According to her, the share of parents who can and want to opt for parental leave would increase to about 60 percent, compared to 39 percent now.
Trust in parents
“We are the family party in Flanders,” Mahdi insists. With this, the party wants to take on the theme of well-being. De Stemming, the opinion survey by De Standaard and VRT NWS, showed that CD&V has the most difficulty of all parties in being associated with certain themes. At the same time, she has been serving the Flemish Minister of Welfare for almost twenty years. Why didn’t CD&V come up with this proposal earlier? “It is mainly about the labor market and must therefore be introduced at the federal level,” it said.
On the theme of well-being and family, the party primarily competes with Vooruit. From the Flemish opposition, the socialists mainly demand extra places in childcare. In the longer term, they want “guaranteed participation of every child in high-quality, free childcare,” reads their election manifesto. According to Vooruit, this is the best recipe for giving children an equal start.
“Patronizing,” says CD&V. “Of course there must be sufficient quality care.” The party previously proposed doubling childcare budgets to around 2 billion euros annually. She is aiming for 10,000 additional shelter places. “But we also have confidence in the parents. So we also want to offer the option to take more care of the child within the family.”
