Federal budget deficit is increasing to more than 25 billion euros
In 2025, the federal budget deficit will be 8 billion euros higher than last year and is already good for 4 percent of GDP. This is evident from the budget that the De Wever government has submitted.
In 2025, the federal government will have a budget of 174 billion euros available for its own operation and social security. The sum of the expenditure clocks on just under 200 billion euros. The deficit in the federal budget is therefore 25.5 billion euros, and accounts for 4 percent of GDP. This is evident from the official budget documents that the De Wever government submitted yesterday and which were published on the website of the Chamber last night.
Even without the increased expenditure for defense, which the federal government wants to keep out of the budget standard through an escape clause from the European Commission, the deficit is 22.7 billion. That is still a wide increase compared to last year, when the federal deficit amounted to 17 billion euros.
Read too. There the dolls are already dancing: exception for the capital tax taxation
The new tables confirm that Belgium is not on track to realize the budget ambitions. Last month, the De Wever government reached an agreement on a ‘national budgetary plan for the medium term’. In it she indicates at the European Commission how our country wants to tame the budget deficit: without measures, after all, the federal deficit would continue to grow to 43 billion euros by 2029 alone.
Reforms
The plan repeated the ambition to reduce the deficit by 2029 to 3 percent. But in the budget submitted yesterday, the deficit for that year, based on the federal figures alone, is estimated at least 3.5 percent of GDP. With the defense measures, it comes to 3.7 percent. The budget deficits of the other regional authorities still have to be added to this.
The ambition will stand or fall over the coming years with the successful implementation of the reforms that the De Wever government plants: the restriction of unemployment in time, the saving on pensions or the tax reform, which must create more jobs.
« This is no longer the result of the Vivaldi government, » say Open VLD MPs Vincent van Quickenborne and Alexia Bertrand in a response. « These are Arizona’s own policy choices. All the extra for defense would be compensated, the budget would be put in order. But with their first budget they just do the opposite. »
