Some of the N-VA’s program points, such as significantly reducing benefits and living wages, may be harsh or antisocial, but will not cost the party votes, believes poverty expert Wim Van Lancker (KULeuven).
The calculation of the election programs by the Federal Planning Bureau allows this for the impact on your own wallet of the different party programs, but also provides insight into underlying social visions. For example, the N-VA believes the current system of benefits and social provisions is too generous. The party therefore wants to substantially take the ax to task.
The N-VA had the Planning Bureau calculate harsh austerity measures, which mainly affect people who rely on the government for their income. For example, the party wants to freeze living wages and unemployment benefits by no longer indexing them at least temporarily. Furthermore, access to the living wage must be stricter and unemployment benefits must be stopped after one year (or after a maximum of 2 years for those training for a recognized shortage profession). Together, these cuts should yield around 3 billion euros annually.
Compared to the plans of other parties, it is striking that, to a lesser extent with Open VLD, but especially with the N-VA, the poorest income groups are in danger of becoming victims. The lowest income decile – i.e. the 10 percent lowest incomes, which usually includes the unemployed and subsistence earners – would have to give up 122 euros per month under the N-VA election programme. The highest income decile will receive an additional 112 euros.
The 10 percent lowest incomes would have to give up 122 euros per month. The 10 percent highest incomes will receive an additional 112 euros.
The N-VA wants to widen the gap between people who work and those who do not work, not primarily through higher wages, but through lower benefits. What do you think about this as a poverty expert?
Wim Van Lancker: The purpose of unemployment insurance is to ensure that people who become unemployed do not immediately fall into poverty and can at least maintain their standard of living for some time. Over the past twenty years, unemployment benefits, but also the living wage and a number of other benefits, have been systematically eroded. As a result, the poverty risk for the unemployed, for example, has risen spectacularly, while the general poverty risk in Belgium remained relatively stable. In 2019, half of the unemployed were at risk of poverty. The De Croo government has increased a number of benefits, on top of the index. The N-VA wants to undo this upgrade again based on the idea: if you reduce social protection for the unemployed and those on subsistence wages, work will automatically become more attractive again. Without having to do anything about the lowest wages.
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The N-VA is now being labeled as a callous, anti-social party that wants to push poor people deeper into poverty. Isn’t that difficult, do you think, for a party that also wants to be a people’s party?
Van Lancker: No, I do not think so. Unemployed people are not popular. This is also because political parties such as the N-VA have been doing everything they can for years to portray unemployed people as profiteers who simply do not want to work. All many citizens agree. So cutting benefits, monitoring more closely who is entitled to them – that will not cost you many votes in Flanders. Surveys on what people think about social protection consistently show that pensions in particular are popular. It should therefore not be surprising that the N-VA plans for pensions appear much less radical. We will all retire at some point, but living wages and unemployment benefits are issues that many people no longer see as important. Because the risk of unemployment in Flanders is highly concentrated among specific, vulnerable people profiles: poorly educated people, migrants. For a Flemish middle class person, the chance of becoming unemployed is slim big. If that is the case, such as during the corona pandemic, the government will immediately come up with heavy artillery and measures which were also very effective and successful.
According to the Planning Bureau, the risk of poverty in Belgium will increase from 11.2 percent to more than 13 percent as a result of the N-VA measures.
Van Lancker: In recent years, for the first time in decades, there has been a downward trend in poverty figures and the general poverty risk. Because many more people have gone to work. And thanks to the increase of a number of minimums in unemployment and health insurance, on top of indexations and welfare adjustments, by the De Croo government. You can immediately see this in the figures: such a policy has a direct impact on the living standards of people who have to rely on it. If, like the N-VA, you want to make cuts and tighten, the risk of poverty for those groups will immediately increase again. I also see no flanking measures at the N-VA that can compensate for that effect. People say simply and quite bluntly: the living wage must be reduced. But if people from the lowest income decile had to give up 122 euros per month, poverty would rise again. That is clear as day.
What does the N-VA want to achieve? Make vulnerable people who have just arrived and do not know the language even more vulnerable?
But can’t it also help in the sense that the N-VA has in mind, namely that lower benefits will encourage people to work?
Van Lancker: We have a huge one labor market tightness. There are more vacancies than there are job seekers. People are now thinking about ways to treat people who actually shouldn’t job seekers, the inactive, get back to work. So what do parties think they will achieve by cutting unemployment benefits? You can’t poach a rock, no matter how hard you try people also make. Other reforms and a long-term strategy will be needed to to guide job seekers and subsistence earners into the labor market. The longer someone lives in poverty, the more difficult it is to get out of it again. As a society you have absolutely no interest in more people in poverty. Not even if you look at it from a purely macroeconomic perspective. Poverty is expensive for the government – dealing with the consequences comes with a large price tag.
The N-VA, as is evident from the measures that the party provided to the Planning Bureau, also wants to make the living wage dependent on matters such as language knowledge and taking an integration course. Those who do not have the required language skills would have to make do with as much as 33 percent less living wage.
From Lacker: This fits in with a dominant discourse in Flanders about the integration of newcomers. We have to be strict, they have to learn the language, if not, we will let them financial punishment. But that also completely ignores the purpose of a living wage and the context in which people arrive in our country. What do you want to achieve with that? Make vulnerable people who have just arrived and do not know the language even more vulnerable? How will that promote their integration? That is another typical ideologically motivated idea that plays on anti-migrant sentiments, without any evidence that it can work or lead to better policy. Are you now also going to ask OCMWs to organize language tests? Are you going to partially deny that protection to people who are simply entitled to social protection with the message: you first have to go to evening school to learn the language? That makes no sense.
