With the number of ATMs in Belgium has been shrinking for over a decade, several petitions are being launched to ask the Federal Government to guarantee every person's fundamental right to easy and free access to their own money.
In Belgium, the number of ATMs shrank from 8,000 to 5,900 between 2017 and the end of 2021, according to last year's figures from the banking umbrella organisation Febelfin. The lack of ATMs is also a known problem across the Brussels-Capital Region, as less affluent neighbourhoods in particular have to make do with fewer and fewer bank branches.
By the end of 2024, due to branch closures and the implementation of the "Batopin" project – which is a collaboration between four major banks to introduce bank-neutral ATMs – fewer than 4,000 ATMs would still be available across Belgium in total, at increasingly distant locations.
Consumer organisation Test Achats, elderly movement Okra and NGO Financité are receiving many complaints from consumers who want to be able to access their money again, they said in a joint press release on Friday.
Banking sector turns a deaf ear
"The feeling is that banks are preventing you from accessing your money whenever you want. Despite numerous complaints, local petitions, motions from municipal councils, resolutions from regional parliaments and parliamentary questions of all political colours, the banking sector continues to turn a deaf ear."
The three organisations are asking three things from federal ministers Vincent Van Peteghem and Pierre-Yves Dermagne and state secretary Alexia Bertrand "who are in talks" with the banking sector: they want an immediate end to the disappearance of ATMs, a return to the number of ATMs of 31 December 2021, evenly distributed across the country.
Additionally, if an acceptable and binding agreement is not found, the organisations demand that the Federal Government pass legislation. The petition can be signed at soscash.be.
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In a response to the petition, Febelfin said that the financial sector understands that the use of cash is still an important basic need. "Adequate access to cash is therefore still a key objective and concern of our industry, in which we will continue to play our role," it said in a press release.
Therefore, it is said it is also "extremely surprised" by Dermagne's reaction earlier this week, when he issued an ultimatum: there must be an agreement by the end of March. If that fails, the relevant ministers will make their own draft law with rules that banks must comply with.
"Talks with the government are ongoing and making progress," Febelfin said. "We remain strongly committed as an industry to reaching an agreement in the coming weeks, and are confident that this is still possible."
