Consultation on draft recovery and resilience plan for Belgium continues

To succeed in reviving our country after the unprecedented health crisis we are experiencing, we must bring together all the forces present and converge our actions. It goes without saying that social consultation has a key role to play in this. Social consultation, an important part of our history and a pillar of our social model, remains more than ever a powerful tool for public and political action.

Thus, right from the start of the process of drafting the Belgian recovery and resilience plan, the Secretary of State for Recovery and Strategic Investments, Thomas Dermine, involved the Central Economic Council (CCE) and the Federal Council for Sustainable Development (CFDD) in the work. The CCE and the CFDD have provided the government with an initial contribution to the RRP on their own initiative.

On 19 February, the two Councils delivered a joint opinion on the strategic orientations of the draft RRP (the overall coherence of the five axes of the plan) and on the proposed direction. On 25 March, the two Councils, this time joined by the National Labour Council (CNT), approved a joint opinion on the investment projects.

Regarding the investment projects, the Councils consider that limiting ourselves to the investments of the RRP is not enough to ensure the transition towards a more sustainable and fairer society. They called for the RRP to be included in an investment plan that was broader than the European plan, in the same way as the Regions had done. Thomas Dermine agrees and underlines it’s the government's ambition to achieve a level of public investment of 3.5% of GDP in 2024 and 4% in 2030. This represents 13.1 billion euros of additional investment over the period 2020-2024. The RRF covers 45% of this €13.1 billion effort over the period 2020-2024. Within this framework, the remaining public investment effort to reach the €13.1 billion target amounts to €7.2 billion.

This opinion on the investment projects is just one of the steps in the consultation process that has been underway since the start of the drafting of the recovery and resilience plan. State Secretary Thomas Dermine would like to thank once again the Central Economic Council, the Federal Council for Sustainable Development and the National Labour Council for the joint work carried out, the quality of the exchanges and their tireless commitment to this unprecedented iterative process.