The prime minister smuggled both the minimum pensions and the tax reform into the discussion about extra budgetary efforts this weekend. It aroused considerable annoyance among the PS and CD&V.
With ‘renewed courage’, the federal government started again around 7 p.m. on Sunday evening. All previous talks had come to nothing this weekend, but Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) continues to conduct the forcing. And on Sunday evening there was still no white smoke. Talks will continue on Monday.
The commitment remains clear: De Croo wants to save extra to push the budget in the right direction. The PS and Ecolo are much less keen on this and don’t even ask for any extra effort at all.
The latter also turned out to be the case on Sunday at the start of the new talks. “Our position remains that no extra efforts are needed,” the PS said. There they emphasize that the economy is still too fragile and that, thanks to a few windfalls, budget figures are already better than expected. But the way in which De Croo wants to save also raises alarm bells among the other government parties.
Minimum pensions
The prime minister was thinking of an extra effort of 300 million euros to make a good figure in Europe in the future. He therefore proposed to do away with the last tranche for the increase of the minimum pensions and the increase of the benefit for the unemployed and living wages.
For the French-speaking socialists, this is ‘completely unacceptable’. They want to avoid at all times that the discussion about the pension reform is dragged into the budgetary control.
At the same time, De Croo also looked firmly in the direction of Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V) with his proposals, even if the savings would be disconnected from the major discussion about a tax reform, which CD&V has long been pushing for.
It is no coincidence that CD&V chairman Sammy Mahdi left this on Sunday VTM News understand that ‘the budget exercise should not be used to completely empty Van Peteghem’s tax reform’. “This will make it impossible to realize the tax reform that should ensure that people who work have more net left over.”
It remains to be seen how far De Croo eventually jumps.
