Renovation works at the Walloon Parliament, including works at the future House of Parliamentarians and a tunnel linking an underground carpark to the parliament building, have gone massively over budget, increasing fourfold and threefold respectively.
Following the suspension of the parliamentary clerk Frédéric Janssens in September, the Bureau of the Walloon Parliament has launched an investigation into wrongdoing behind the overspending.
Initially budgeted at €10 million, the bill for the new House of Parliamentarians has already reached €46 million. Likewise, the new tunnel from the car park, estimated to cost €900,000, has now reached €3 million.
In an interview with RTL Info on Tuesday, parliamentary opposition leader, François Desquesnes, said that the lack of oversight by the former clerk had been “totally incomprehensible.”
“We are asking for transparency on the figures for the renovations at the Parliament, we are asking for access to the file, that the opposition can have access to it, because this increase of €28 million (House of Parliamentarians), without anyone seeing anything, is incomprehensible,” Desquesnes said.
Also in opposition to the ruling coalition in the Walloon Parliament, the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB), has called for a review of the parliament’s accounts by the Court of Auditors.
“We have been proposing from the start that the Court of Auditors checks all the amount validated by Parliament since the engagement of Frédéric Janssens, that is to say since 2009. Thus, we would have an independent examination,” said MP Germain Mugemangango.
Desquesnes argues that, within the parliament, there is a dedicated office whose job it is to oversee material expenditure, including for the building and staff. “How can we spend so much and not see it?,” the opposition leader asked.
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The Walloon opposition leader even suggests that the fault may extend beyond the now-disgraced clerk Janssens to André Antoine, former president of the Walloon Parliament, who made the decision to give the clerk full powers.
“The works were launched under the presidency of André Antoine, but they were executed afterwards, with a new team. The parties who came after did not follow the plans, and suddenly, we discovered, three years later, that the budget had gone from €17 to €46 million,” he said.
Desquesnes wants a full investigation and is reluctant to entirely blame the former clerk. On Tuesday, the Bureau of the Walloon Parliament is expected to analyse official reports relating to the parliament’s expenditure of the two projects.
