2023-10-15 18:12:55
The Brussels government had great difficulty agreeing on savings options. A sum of 200 million euros has been identified, which does not allow us to regain balance in 2024, even without counting strategic investments.
Members of the government of Rudi Vervoort (PS) hoped to land on Saturday, but it was ultimately only early Sunday evening that the announcement of white smoke was made. After two weeks of tense negotiations, the Brussels executive holds its 2024 budget.
The initial overall effort which amounted to nearly 600 million euros was therefore not achieved. “We have made savings of 3% on personnel, 5% on operations, 8% on optional subsidies and 10% on investments, which gives us a total of 200 million euros. This allows us to consolidate the budget and limit the deficit to 450 million euros“, says Sven Gatz.
If we add strategic investments, i.e. 500 million euros, we will probably reach a total deficit of around 950 million euros in 2024.
“We are not out of the woods, and we will need serious savings in the years to come.”
The debt ratio will ultimately be 210%, but the Dutch-speaking liberal nevertheless says he is satisfied with having set such a ceiling. While the requests on the table were very numerous, Sven Gatz believes this was a step in the right direction and to have a better situation than in 2023. “We are not out of the woods, and we will need serious savings in the years to come,” he admits.
Worsening debt
For the record, the Brussels Region finds itself in a delicate budgetary situation due to its growing debt. Its debt amounted to 11.5 billion euros at the end of 2022 compared to 5.5 billion euros in 2018. This situation is partly explained by the choice, made since 2017 in a context of low interest rates, to take on debt to invest massively in mobility. Successive crises (covid, energy, Ukraine) have also contributed to widening the deficits during this legislature.
During the summer, the Monitoring Committee, which considers that this development constitutes a growing risk for the financing of the Region, recommended define a multi-year trajectory which can serve as a binding framework for financing balances.
It is in this global context that Sven Gatz (Open Vld) demanded linear savings of 5% from all Brussels administrations last spring. But these reduction targets were deemed unattainable by other members of the government. The environmentalist fringe particularly feared that such cuts might not be made without affecting the Stib offer.
In a tweet, Brussels Minister Alain Maron (Ecolo) declared this Sunday evening that it was important for him to continue investments in public transportenergy renovation of buildings and social health.
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