The PS party enters into a pact with the extreme left to stop the Animal Welfare Code

After the Brussels governing parties failed to reach an agreement on Minister Clerfayt’s new Animal Welfare Code, the opposition parties N-VA, MR and cd&v, together with PS party MP Julien Uyttendaele, decided to submit the legal text to Parliament themselves. Parliament declared the text admissible. A troubling coalition of socialists (PS and Vooruit parties), communists (PTB party) and who else but the Open Vld party is still trying to boycott the approval of the Code with a completely unnecessary request for advice from the Council of State.

If one-third of the MPs request it, an ordinance proposal will be submitted to the Council of State for advice. The 30 MPs of the PS, Vooruit, PTB and Open Vld parties who want advice on the Animal Welfare Code hope this will prevent the text from being handled in Parliament this legislature. That way, they will also finally prevent the introduction of a ban on slaughter without stunning in Brussels through an amendment.

Cynical political game

N-VA group chair Cieltje Van Achter is disappointed that a cynical political game is being played at the expense of animal welfare. “I am pleased that the Animal Welfare Code is being considered today and that discussion of this important legislation can begin. We have thus succeeded in getting the opposition to respect parliamentary debate. Without our exceptional intervention to submit the text, this would have been completely impossible, as the PS party blocked this debate.

Pact with communists

However, the text now before Parliament has already been reviewed very thoroughly by the Council of State. The recommendations that the Council of State formulated were also included in the text. The new request for advice is thus a deliberate attempt to torpedo this important piece of legislation. The fact that the Vooruit and the PS parties entered into a pact with the communists of the PVDA-PTB party for purely electoral reasons is truly unacceptable to me.”