‘Win for life’ in Brussels
The Brussels government cannot be blamed for a lack of creativity. When it comes to the death of public money, it goes minimal. In 2010, the aim was to make it more attractive for civil servants to apply for top positions in the administration. Those jobs had a duration of five years, possibly renewable and well paid. But those who returned to their former job fell back on lower wages and missed promotion opportunities. That’s why someone, who will probably remain anonymous for now, came up with this…
The Brussels government cannot be blamed for a lack of creativity. When it comes to the death of public money, it goes minimal.
In 2010, the aim was to make it more attractive for civil servants to apply for top positions in the administration. Those jobs had a duration of five years, possibly renewable and well paid. But those who returned to their former job fell back on lower wages and missed promotion opportunities.
That is why someone, who will probably remain anonymous, came up with this idea: if two directorships had been served, the salary would continue to be paid to the pension.
A wage for doing nothing
Some kind of ‘Win for Life’ someone from government circles called it in Le Soir. A wage of at least 10,000 euros per month until the age of 65. One of the candidates was a former employee of the cabinet of Guy Van Hengel (Open Vld), the former Minister of Finance. She can count on an annual salary of no less than 316,000 euros, which could pay for two jobs at A5 level.
Because it was very rude to give someone so much money to do nothing until they are 65, a title was invented for her, of which no one could demonstrate what is expected of her. She will be head of the ‘Brussels synergy’ department and they would manage the administrative departments ‘which play a role in regional coordination’. A documented superfluous function, which was only created for political reasons. Another candidate is allowed to oversee the aid to Ukrainians, although he has not the slightest experience in that field.
Le Soir
Not one organizational chart that has been agreed on with good and economical management as a starting point would have achieved this expensive appointment. They are superfluous and useless, but above all very expensive. But it is like good governance that in Brussels, as at all other political levels in this country, it has to fight against partisan interests.
That not one member of the government knows the insanity of this arrangement is most curious. In Brussels, no schedule was seen until it leaked in the press. Credit to whom credit is due: Le Soir has recently been known for investigative journalism of a very high level: about the waste of money in Wallonia, the corruption in the European Parliament and now the ‘Win for Life’ of the Brussels government.
Court of Audit
The Brussels political heavy and light weights are not heavy on well thought-out spending of public money and some orthodoxy in accounting. The Court of Audit is also not in favor of getting the Brussels government to think about better management. Every year the budget goes up into the red. This also has consequences for the debt, which is moving towards 10 billion euros. Paying off this will cost no less than 34% more due to the rising interest rate in 2023.
A mere mortal running up in debt will try to cut back on his expenses. The Brussels government has also done this. But how likely are they to do this with the naked election of 2024?
Perfect insulation
That no one in government took offense to the ‘Win for Life’ scheme for senior officials is symptomatic. It shows a mentality of sloppy administrators who let the citizen run for their antics. It cannot be repeated enough that, compared to the other governments of this country, there are nowhere more cabinet employees than in Brussels. Prime Minister Rudi Vervoort even has twice as many employees as his Flemish colleague Jan Jambon. At the moment, the 19 Brussels municipalities have particularly large financial resources and see no other way out than to increase the chances of withholding tax on real estate. They are obliged by the Region to keep their budget in balance, something that the regional government itself does not do.
The Brussels administrators imagine themselves in ‘splendid isolation’ and look contemptuously at anyone who has reservations about their administration. But the money can’t keep falling from the sky. And with rising interest rates, the reckoning for citizens could well arrive quickly and eventually.