The budget of the Belgian French-speaking community, otherwise known as the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB), is under threat, Le Soir reports. With low birth rates in the region, the amount of money going into the coffers of French-language education institutions, as well as towards culture and the judiciary, is dropping year-on-year.
Unlike other regional budgets, which make money through direct taxation, the FWB is entirely dependent on the Federal State to provide it with money. The Federal Government reserves part of its revenue from VAT to finance the French and Flemish communities. For education, which accounts for 75% of the budget, money is distributed according to the proportion of students aged 6-17 regularly enrolled in compulsory education.
In 2023, Federal VAT income promises to bring €13,000 per student. For French speakers, however, this amounts to around just €8,000. The more students that the region registers, the higher the budget allocated by the Federal Government towards the budget of the FWB.
Each year on 16 January, schools are asked to officially communicate the number of students enrolled at educational institutions: they are asked to carefully count the number of students, as any miscalculation risks costing the FWB thousands in missed grants.
Unfortunately for the French-speaking regions, low-birth rates and dwindling student registrations are having a significant impact on the FWB’s finances. In 2006, the FWB received 43% of the total budget reserved for Belgium’s linguistic community. In 2010, this dropped to 42.05%. In 2023, this has deteriorated once again to 41.77%.
Strangled finances
A drop of just 1% can represent a decrease in millions of euros in funding for French-language teaching and cultural institutions. “Between 2021 and 2022, the student allocation deteriorated by 0.16%, which represents a loss of revenue of around €30 million,” the office of the FWB's Budget Minister Frédéric Daerden told Le Soir.
This year, a further drop of 0.26% is predicted, which represents a shortfall of €50 million. By 2031, there are fears that the French-speaking community will receive just 39.98% of the funding set aside for Belgium’s linguistic communities.
As demographic decline accelerates in the relatively poorer French-speaking regions, this trend is set to only continue. Reduced allocations will mean tighter budgets and increasingly difficult public finances. In Flanders, the population growth rate for 6 to 17-year-olds is significantly stronger than in the FWB. According to projections, this trend will not reverse in the FWB until 2040.
By 2030, this demographic downturn will severely impact the finances of the FWB. Education, judiciary, cultural institutions, and other sub-regional level financings will take a hit of €338 million unless something is done to boost the attractiveness of having children, the newspaper reports.
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In Wallonia, there are fresh calls for the Federal Government to re-evaluate its approach to allocations to the linguistic communities. Officials want Belgium to recognise education as an investment per student, noting that young people and teenagers also contribute to a net national financial contribution of around €65,000 during their studies.
The question of funding students goes beyond the educational sector. Under the current system of funding allocation, enshrined in past political agreements, these student allocations risk cutting funding to services used by the adult population, such as further education, and culture, as well as support services such as youth programmes and other societal projects.
