2023-10-05 14:57:00
“We will not make any comments”, the press managers of Rudi Vervoort (PS) and Sven Gaz limit themselves to communicating. “The government is working,” assures the spokesperson for Rudi Vervoort, the Minister-President of Brussels. “The budgetary negotiations are continuing and all avenues are on the table”, specifies that of Sven Gatz.
According to our information, it is precisely the leads on the table that pose a problem. Sven Gatz put pressure on his government colleagues to make significant budgetary efforts, each in their own area. Too important, according to other ministers, some of whom consider that these requests are not aligned with the policy pursued since the start of the legislature.
And even with the previous ones, when Rudi Vervoort (PS), the current Minister-President of Brussels and Guy Vanhengel (Open VLD), the former Minister of the Budget, maintained the best relations. The understanding is hardly as good with Sven Gatz.
“To hear Sven Gatz this Thursday, we might have doubted the fact that the Open VLD has managed the budget for 20 years in the Brussels Region,” a government source tells us. He wants to find solutions in three months to questions that have been open for decades. Sven Gatz and Rudi Vervoort no longer have the same electoral plans. Gatz needs to clean up the budget for his electoral image, while Rudi Vervoort wants to continue to invest and promote the Region. We are facing a crisis of regional leadership. There is also, beyond the figures, a crisis of confidence.”
If the discussions are only suspended, this Thursday’s episode gives an indication of the difficulty awaiting the Brussels government in finding a viable budgetary trajectory. Rudi Vervoort’s government statement to the Brussels Parliament is scheduled for October 19.
On Saturday, in L’Écho, Sven Gatz recalled that the Brussels Region will not be able to ignore a global effort estimated at nearly 584 million euros to achieve budgetary balance in 2024, assuring that “the first step to achieve this, it is to make 5% savings”.
Earlier, in La Libre, he warned: “The Brussels-Capital Region has a debt rate which reaches 198% of the Region’s revenue. Above 205%, the rating agencies will downgrade our rating.”
Sven Gatz: “The Metro 3 project will have to be done via the kilometer tax”
The Covid crisis, the war in Ukraine, and inflation have worsened Brussels’ budgetary slippage. However, before Covid and despite the refinancing, the finances of the Brussels Region were already plunging. The financing balance of the Brussels Region was still up by 33 million euros in 2016. The curve plunged to reach a deficit of 129 million in 2017, under the previous government.
Out of a total of some 7 billion euros, the 2023 draft budget showed a deficit of minus 1.124 billion euros reduced to minus 485 million by budgetary corrections of 888.9 million euros.
The Region’s debt has almost tripled in less than 10 years to reach nearly 13 billion. With unchanged policy, Brussels will have a debt of 19 billion euros in 2028, according to experts from the University of Namur.
In the Brussels Region, deficit and debt continue to grow
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