The European Commission has agreed to extend Belgium’s deadline for submitting its multi-annual budget plan to 31 December, following a request by federal formator Bart De Wever.
The Commission confirmed on Thursday that it had reviewed the requests from all Member States and granted extensions where appropriate.
The "national medium-term plan" is a product of the new European economic governance rules, detailing each member state’s budgetary goals, priority reforms, and investments for the coming years.
Particular attention will be given to countries like France, Belgium, and six other states — Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Malta, and Romania — that are all currently under an excessive deficit procedure.
The original deadline for submitting the document was 20 September. N-VA leader De Wever, negotiating a new political coalition dubbed 'Arizona' (N-VA, MR, Engagés, Vooruit, CD&V), asked the outgoing government’s Secretary of State for Budget, Alexia Bertrand (Open VLD), to seek an extension to 31 December.
The Commission has also provided a "reference trajectory" to guide countries in preparing their plans.
If the plans align with EU priorities, the period for reducing debt to a sustainable downward trajectory can be extended to seven years instead of four. For Belgium, this fiscal adjustment would amount to €28 billion, according to the Monitoring Committee.
