Brussels budget: government tries to sidestep parliamentary scrutiny, N-VA calls for postponement

“Dirk De Smedt (Anders) is taking liberties with the democratic rules: parliamentary deadlines are not being respected, and it is impossible for both Parliament and the Court of Audit to do our job properly.” Brussels N-VA group leader Gilles Verstraeten is calling for the debate on the Brussels budget to be postponed.

According to Gilles Verstraeten, the budget is being rushed through Parliament. MPs only received the final budget documents on 12 March, while the report of the Court of Audit followed on 13 March, after office hours. As a result, parliamentarians had barely a few days to analyse thousands of pages of documents before the committee debate.
“This is more of the same: the Vivaldi club, together with Budget Minister Dirk De Smedt, is pushing everything through Parliament at breakneck speed. Parliamentary scrutiny is being completely hollowed out. We don’t even know what we are approving, because the entire budget is essentially one large provision. The government can shift the amounts around as it pleases,” says Gilles Verstraeten.

“Anders” turns out to be worse

The Court of Audit was given only five working days to examine the budget. On top of that, the budget documents were amended after they had already been sent to the Court of Audit. “The figures the Court of Audit had to analyse were already outdated because of new changes. That is unheard of and unacceptable. During the Vivaldi period, similar practices led to the resignation of Budget State Secretary Eva De Bleecker. If Anders was supposed to be different, we must conclude that it is actually worse. The government is playing with the figures to bypass oversight and transparency.”

Vague, unclear and amended at the last minute

According to the Court of Audit, key explanations are missing and inconsistencies appear between certain amounts mentioned in the report and the figures in the budget documents. “Just like the coalition agreement, this budget is vague, unclear and cobbled together in a matter of days, only to be amended again at the very last minute. This is simply not serious,” says Gilles Verstraeten.

Debt keeps rising

The government is also trying to keep €1 billion in spending outside the budget, “fairground tricks to make the situation look better than it really is.” Yet the Region’s debt will continue to rise, reaching more than €19.1 billion by 2029, according to the Court of Audit. “Expenditures that are not shown in the tables do not disappear: in the end, the people of Brussels will have to pay the debt and the interest on it.”

Budgetary balance not a priority

According to the N-VA, the chances that the Brussels budget will be balanced by 2029 are virtually non-existent. “In 2019, former Budget Minister Sven Gatz promised a balanced budget by 2024, but the deficit ultimately reached €1.56 billion. The coalition agreement and these budget tables give us little confidence that things will be any different this time. And the man who is supposed to deliver the miracle — Budget Minister Dirk De Smedt — is himself one of the architects of the massive financial holes created in recent years. Moreover, a balanced budget is simply not a priority for the other governing parties. So nothing will come of it,” Gilles Verstraeten concludes.