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In our occasional series on neighbouring European countries we examine the country at the heart of the European Union and the political trials and economic successes of Belgium.
FOR A SMALL COUNTRY which often has the undeserved reputation of being boring, Belgium has been through a tumultuous few years recently. Its normally glacial political landscape melted in the general elections of 1999 when the long-serving coalition between the two biggest parties, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists was decisively defeated. Meanwhile the economy, after some slump years in the early nineties, has started to boom. The National Bank (Banque Nationale de Belgique/Nationale Bank van België) forecasts 3.9% GDP growth in 2000 and 3% in 2001. The reasons for the political change lay in the loss of confidence in the whole political structure which the Belgian people seemed to feel after a series of scandals in the mid 1990s. The case of Willy Claes, a former prime minister and NATO general secretary, who was convicted of taking bribes in a deal with an Italian helicopter company convinced electors that politics was steeped in mismanagement and corruption following, as it did, the mishandling of the case of Marc Dutroux who was arrested for the murder of young girls in a paedophilia case.
After the elections a new coalition was formed between the Liberals, the Greens and the Socialists; the Christian Democrats who had been in power for forty years being left out. With a Liberal prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, the main employers' organisation, the FEB/VBO, expected some reductions in their social security contributions, a will to improve the efficiency of public services, the introduction of pay restraint , liberalisation of the energy market and measures in favour of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
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Ministers in the new Belgian government: | ||
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Employment and Labour, Laurette Onkelinx; |
Prime Minister,Guy Verhofstadt; |
and Social Affairs and Pensions, Frank Vandenbroucke |
However the trade unions, counting on the socialist ministers of Employment and Labour, Laurette Onkelinx, and Social Affairs and Pensions, Frank Vandenbroucke, expected the new government to respond to new social needs by expanding the level of care and improving the funding of education, and to contribute to bringing about an improvement in the quality of work through more family-friendly organisation. Belgium's two main trade union organisations, the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions, CSC/ACV and the Belgian General Federation of Labour, FGTB/ABVV also wanted full employment in Flanders and, as an intermediate step, a reduction in unemployment to 4% by the end of the new government's term and were concerned by the steady onward march of extreme right-wing political views, as reflected in the outcome of the elections.
Although the 'shopping lists' of unions and employers diverge in a number of respects the most obvious conflict is on the reduction of working time, a subject on which the employers, FEB/VBO refused to re-open negotiations with trade union organisations. This being so, the government felt that it had to step into the breach, in May Ms. Onkelinx announced a plan on 'modernising work organisation and working time', including measures such as a four-day working week, a 35-hour working week and a system of time credits. Perhaps surprisingly, there was significant trade union criticism of this plan, not so much of its content but because the minister had bypassed the social dialogue in which working hours were agreed between unions and employers. For their part the employers' organisations issued a joint press release which declared 'To bring down statutory working time from 39 to 35 hours a week while maintaining pay levels would cost companies BEF 378.3 billion, which can only be qualified as economic nonsense'.
Meanwhile the economic upswing has led unions to regret government measures in which they acquiesced in lean times in the name of creating jobs. With the Belgian economy experiencing rapid growth, trade unions are keen to ensure that workers receive their share of the bounty but laws brought in after the rise in unemployment of the '70s and '80s impose limits on wage increases. The law on 'employment promotion and preventive safeguarding of competitiveness' provides for the alignment of wage increases in Belgium to estimated trends for its principal trading partners, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The current norm runs out at the end of the year and the Belgian confederations want to be free from then to negotiate what they can from employers who see things rather differently. A restraining wage norm, along with reduced taxation, remains - according to FEB/VBO - the best way to stimulate the competitiveness of enterprises and promote employment.
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