The Voting Guide: 1,000 pages of promises, but hardly anything about putting the budget in order

Now that almost all election manifestos have been drawn up, it is clear how vague parties generally remain about what may be the biggest task for a new government after June 9: some 30 billion euros in savings or new income.

De Tijd is launching its Kieswijzer today. It will guide you through the election manifestos for June 9, amounting to approximately 1,000 pages, based on about fifty questions. Examples include whether nuclear power stations should remain open longer, whether permanent appointments in education should remain, and whether the rules for asylum and family reunification should be stricter.

The answer is always based on what the parties themselves say in their election manifestos. For the N-VA, the only Flemish party that has yet to adopt that programme, the texts are based on the party’s most recent ideological conference. After this weekend, when the party approves its program for June 9 at a conference, De Tijd’s Electoral Guide will receive an update.

What is striking when plowing through the programs is the vagueness of parties about the perhaps most important question that a government will face after June 9: how 31 billion euros should be reorganized in the coming years.

Ten days after the elections, on June 19, the European Commission publishes its report on the budgetary situation in Belgium. She previously stated that she will initiate criminal proceedings for countries with too large a deficit. Pressure also comes from elsewhere. The credit rating agency Fitch reprimanded Belgium last week because not enough has been done to keep pension expenditure under control.

As present as the discussion about the budget threatens to become after the elections, it is still absent from the campaign. Only Open VLD has already come up with a calculated plan to put matters in order, which is mainly built on an arsenal of measures to get more people to work. The plans for the other parties are more vague, although communication is still underway from some. As mentioned, the N-VA will only hold its election conference this weekend. Vooruit has detailed plans ready.

An important common thread throughout the various campaigns is that each party is afraid of hurting the voter. Hardly anywhere are measures mentioned that cut where the citizen feels it. The closest we come are the proposals to increase health expenditure more slowly, but even then this still involves growth above inflation.

Sometimes the plans are mainly strategic and for the long term. For example, many parties are strongly committed to the goal of getting 80 percent of the working-age population into work. The difficult thing about that strategy, however, is that it works slowly and can be undermined by temporary crises.

For example, the De Croo government started with an employment rate of 70 percent for the whole of Belgium and managed to increase it to 72 percent. But the budget was still thrown off course due to the corona and energy crisis: while the budget deficit in 2019 was 2 percent of gross domestic product, it shot up to 4.4 percent last year.

Other proposals lack detail. For example, CD&V wants to obtain 2.8 billion euros from the fight against tax fraud, 2 billion euros from not using planned budgets and 1 billion euros from better collection of VAT. The PVDA is counting on payback effects from public investments. But if this can be done so painlessly and easily, the big question is why it is not happening today.

A final set of political ideas makes a lot of money on paper, but is radical. Examples are the plans of Vlaams Belang to abolish transfers from Flemish to French-speaking taxpayers or the PVDA’s millionaire tax. Both parties estimate the yield from their measures at 8 billion euros.

The shortcoming of these proposals is that a political majority does not immediately emerge to implement them. And if they do succeed, they will only make money in the long term. It therefore does not seem immediately useful measures to have an immediate major impact in the circumstances in which Belgium will find itself after the elections.

The speed of execution matters. Even without a government, pension expenditure will increase after June 9, because benefits are indexed and the group of retirees grows. Even without a government, interest rates rise and the national debt becomes more expensive. Pierre Wunsch, the governor of the National Bank, calculated the price of the standstill last month at 2.5 billion euros per year.

With more than six weeks to go until June 9, there is still plenty of time to campaign. But at the moment the election discussion is not yet about the most important issue that will probably prevent a government from being put in place quickly on June 10: the money.