Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo wants to give priority to finding work for jobseekers in Belgium before considering using undocumented workers to fill shortage jobs, as proposed by Wallonia on Wednesday.
"Honestly, if I look at the level of unemployment in certain parts of the country – and unemployment is still higher in the Walloon Region than in other Regions – I think the first priority is to activate our unemployed first and then see if we need other sources of labour," explained De Croo to LN24.
In July, Walloon Minister-President Elio Di Rupo (Socialist Party - PS) wrote to the Prime Minister to ask for a relaxation of the residence permits rules for people with skills that are currently unavailable in the labour market, reported L’Echo on Wednesday.
The initiative was put forward by the Walloon Minister for Employment, Christie Morreale but reportedly did not reflect a common position of the entire Walloon executive where the subject had not yet been discussed, an unnamed source from the liberal MR party said.
"It seems desirable to us that federal regulations should evolve to allow these people, applicants for international protection and undocumented migrants, to apply to the Regions for a work permit," the Di Rupo said in the letter. "Currently, among people with a temporary residence permit, only students and researchers are authorised to apply for a single permit."
Walloon Minister-President Elio Di Rupo. Credit: Belga / Kurt Desplenter
The proposal was supported by the French-speaking Greens (Ecolo). "Excellent initiative by the Walloon Government! Faced with shortages on the job market, we can no longer accept such a harsh asylum policy that is blind to economic challenges. The Federal Government must react and we will be questioning them," wrote the leader of the Ecolo in the Federal Parliament, Gilles Van den Burre, on the X network (formerly Twitter).
MR, on the other hand, are hostile to the idea, led by Georges-Louis Bouchez, and the Vice-President of the Walloon Government, Willy Borsus, who, like De Croo, say the priority is to get jobseekers into work.
“On the one hand, they (the government) are refusing to put Walloon jobseekers to work, of whom there are nearly 200,000, 50% of whom have been unemployed for more than two years. But as they don’t want to go to work, don’t worry, we’re going to regularise people who come from abroad”, Bouchez lamented, on LN24.
The MR leader said he had no objection to a policy of economic migration. But this can only come in the second instance, after a prior reduction in the number of Walloon jobseekers.
Hunger strikes
In the summer of 2021, a hunger strike led by undocumented migrants demanding to be regularised had created sharp tensions within the federal majority, isolating the PS and the Greens from the other Vivaldi partners.
Press conference the Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste-au-Beguinage church, in Brussels, where undocumented migrants undertook a hunger strike to demand regularisation, Wednesday 03 November 2021. Credit: Belga / James Arthur Gekiere
The Secretary of State for Migration at the time, Sammy Mahdi (CD&V), was firmly opposed to any form of regularisation, including through work. His successor Nicole de Moor unsurprisingly rejected Di Rupo’s idea, calling it a "recipe from the past". In her view, a clear distinction should be made between those who have a right to stay in Belgium, who should be activated, and those who cannot stay and should return home.
Two years ago, PS had called for an inter-ministerial employment conference to address the issue, which was also mentioned in Di Rupo's letter this month.
The PS Deputy Prime Minister, Pierre-Yves Dermagne, in charge of Employment, defended the idea of his former party leader as a pragmatic solution to the problem of skills shortages, supported by several employers’ federations. In his view, sectors such as care and teaching could benefit from it.
