The core cabinet of the outgoing Federal Government met on Monday evening to set a budget of "provisional twelfths" for the first quarter of the coming year, in the absence of an annual budget decided by a new government.
However, during the meeting on Monday night, De Croo's core cabinet postponed a decision on setting a budget for the National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance, INAMI.
Twelfths are a budgetary system to finance the government's public spending in the absence of an approved annual budget. It stipulates that if a government has not adopted a budget for the coming year by 31 December, it can only spend one-twelfth of what it has spent the previous year per month, with the addition of indexation.
It ensures the continuity of state services and the payment of public service salaries. This mechanism will cease once the new government is installed.
Health budget on the table
Negotiations to form a new government are still underway. In consultation with formator Bart De Wever (N-VA), the Prime Minister proposed a 2025 budget in the form of provisional twelfths for the first three months of the year.
On the agenda was the health and disability budget. As expected, the outgoing government did not make a decision on that issue. A further meeting on the subject will be held on 9 December if the parties negotiating the incoming coalition fail to reach agreement by then.
At the end of October, the INAMI General Council, too, had been unable to reach a decision on its 2025 budget, which had been negotiated by mutual insurance companies and healthcare providers. Within the outgoing government, Open VLD refused to approve the budget, while the Mouvement Réformateur (MR) abstained.
Socialists and greens back proposal
The current growth norm is 2.5%, over and above indexation, which represents an increase of €2 billion. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) believes it is up to the next government to make a decision on this issue.
On the other hand, prospective coalition partners, particularly the Socialists and Greens, would like the budget negotiated by the sector's partners to be approved.
Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) made no secret of his disappointment after the meeting.
"Patients and healthcare workers have a right to certainty as quickly as possible: certainty on tariffs for patients, certainty on indexation of benefits for healthcare providers because there is no time to lose in preparing the measures needed to halt the slippage in spending," Vandenbroucke said.
An ambulance at the Universitair Ziekenhuis Antwerpen (UZA) hospital. Credit: Belga
"Postponing the decision is all the more regrettable because many of our colleagues support the proposal before us, a proposal based on very broad consultation between all the players in the healthcare sector," he added.
Unlike PS, the Belgian Green parties and Open VLD, Vooruit is taking part in current government discussions alongside MR and the CD&V. ‘There wasn't a great deal of agreement between the prospective coalition partners," a source commented after the meeting.
Monday's physical meeting of the outgoing government was the first of its kind since the 9 June elections.
