“Belgium is chained to a political system plagued by dysfunction and spends excessively. The country is therefore on track to face ever-increasing debts.” This is written by the American news agency Bloomberg, the most important source of information about the financial markets.
If policy remains unchanged, Belgium’s budget deficit will reach 45 billion euros by 2029. The debt ratio would rise to almost 120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). These blood-red figures clearly worry American financial experts: “Belgium is on course to post the largest deficits in the euro zone for years.”
Curatorship
According to the new budget rules, EU member states must work towards a budget deficit of 3 percent of GDP over a period of 4 to 7 years. Currently the deficit is about 5.6 percent of GDP. For this, Belgium would have to make an estimated annual effort of 3.4 billion euros. Only Slovakia has to follow an even tougher budgetary path.
In Bloomberg, Minister of Finance Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V) says that “we must avoid someone else telling us what to do”. If Member States fail to stay below the deficit or debt threshold, the European Commission may decide to impose sanctions or initiate a corrective procedure. However, no Belgian political party has brought the budget deficit back within those European limits in its election manifesto. As a result, there seems to be a good chance that tightened European supervision of Belgian finances is imminent; especially if it takes months after June 9 before a full-fledged government is put in place.
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Tags: Americans concerned government finances Belgium chained dysfunctional political system spends excessively
