“Austerity is being maintained despite the left-wing components of the” coalition government, parliamentarian of Workers Party of Belgium (PTB), Marco Van Hees, said on Tuesday during the budget debate in the Chamber.
"From the very first line of the budget, you can read cuts in different departments,” he noted. “It seemed to me that if growth was below 1%, there would be no variable austerity. That will be the case in 2023, and yet there will be variable austerity.”
The government has decided to replace the fixed annual target of 0.2% of GDP laid out in the government agreement with a variable target of 0.14% in 2023 and 0.12% in 2024, former Budget Secretary Eva De Bleeker announced after a budget conclave in October.
On the subject of austerity, the parliamentarian also pointed to the reduction in the growth standard for health care (from 2.5% to 2%) and “attacks on the time credit (from 51 to 48 months) in line with the right-wing government of Charles Michel.”
According to Van Hees, there are, however, solutions that would allow the budget to be balanced without affecting the population, such as blocking energy prices, conducting a different monetary policy at the European level and making savings in the medicines budget.
Other potential alternatives include increasing gross salaries, reducing “gifts to large companies” and taking “measures against large-scale fraud and tax havens.”
The PTB also announced the tabling of an amendment to introduce a “millionaires’ tax”.
In addition, the party said, the tax on excess profits in the energy sector is too low.
“The government is only taking one billion out of 10 billion (in excess profits)," Marco Van Hees said. "We are skimming off the top, but we are leaving a lot of cream.”
