2023-09-09 05:16:00
He will have spent forty years in active politics. Sitting in the Chamber, the Senate and the Walloon Parliament, André Antoine (les Engagés), 63 years old, will no longer be a candidate for the Walloon Region during the election of June 9, 2024. “It is a decision that we took as a family, at the start of this legislature. I announced it to my president in June 2022. But I will remain very active in the Walloon Parliament, until the end of the legislature,” explains the man who spoke 1,355 times in Parliament during this legislature.
It was at the age of 23 that he began his political journey. In 1983, a young graduate of UCL – he obtained a degree in law and a degree in European economics – he joined the service of Gérard Deprez, then president of the PSC. In 1985, “by a miracle”, he said, he was elected to the Chamber, at the age of 25. He is the youngest MP in Belgium, which earned him the nickname “baby Antoine”. “We didn’t think we would get the seat, I was second on the list. Via connection, finally, I was elected, I learned it at 6 a.m..”
These “special allowances” of several thousand euros from which MPs benefit, in addition to their pension and their severance pay
André Antoine will have a long life as a parliamentarian. It was under the rainbow legislature (1999-2004) in Wallonia, while his party was moving into opposition to become the CDH, that he made his mark. He clashes with the majority ministers, particularly with his best enemy Michel Daerden (PS). In 2004, he became a minister. It will remain so for ten years. Ten “weary” years by his own admission, during which he did not always have good press. The Sagawé affair – named after an urban planning scandal – or the management of the Walloon debt – even if it must be admitted that it is more worrying today than in its time – undermine it. He, whose high-pitched and powerful laugh attracts attention, sometimes won’t even laugh at all. “I am convinced that the number of ministerial mandates must be limited to two,” he confides today. Over time, a minister no longer dares to do radical things. He takes care of his mount to go further.”
André Antoine, however, has good memories of this period. And recalls with a certain pride the files he carried at the time. “The Airbag plan that I launched still exists, the high-level sports center in Louvain-la-Neuve, the hockey plan.”
Business theft: “Patrick Dupriez and André Antoine also carried out missions with the clerk, under the same conditions”, reacts Marcourt
Solwatt, a good and a bad memory
Solwatt, the mechanism aimed at encouraging the photovoltaic sector through very generous green certificates, is for him both a bad and a good memory. While recalling that when the financial problem appeared, it was someone other than him who managed the file, he admits: “Despite all the criticisms on this level, in the end, we see today that it was a fair choice given the number of people who continue to install signs”.
Who will replace him as party leader in Walloon Brabant? “It’s not yet decided, we’re working on it.”
André Antoine who was also mayor of Perwez (2001-2018) will continue to be active, very active even. At his age, he can’t see himself not doing anything at all anymore. “In 1987, I was going to become a father and there were no daycare centers near us. My wife then told me that it was well worth getting into politics and not taking action. So I created a nursery. From now on, I manage ten of them as managing director. We are building an eleventh and four more are planned. I will therefore work there full time, in addition to my duties as president of a retirement home and a training center. Two other structures I created. This represents 150 staff members. So I stay active. Baby Antoine takes care of babies,” he explains hilariously. And then, there is still the municipal election in October 2024. For the moment, he does not yet know if he will run. “That’s another story,” he concludes.
André Antoine: “We must make nurseries almost free”
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