There are images that hurt, like that of this West Ring, the ring road that takes thousands of Walloon employees to Brussels every day: the road is bumpy until it reaches the territory of the Flemish region, then becomes impeccably tarred. An eloquent contrast between a region still in search of its recovery and another which sits in the ranking of the richest European regions.
There are comments that hurt even more, such as those made, in 2021, by the Flemish nationalist leader Bart De Wever, who compared the budgetary situation of Wallonia to that of Greece in 2008. Which pushed, a few months later late, daily The Free Belgium to wonder if a bankruptcy, a disaster scenario for this region, was “really impossible”.
The gap between revenue and expenditure for the region remains at some 4 billion euros, and it has had to spend a little more following two crises: 3.3 billion euros for that of Covid-19 , and 2.7 billion against the consequences of the terrible floods of July 2021. In September, a document from the public bank Belfius, which largely finances Wallonia, added to the trouble.
“Salon talk”
The report questioned both the level of indebtedness and the political situation in the region, given the rise of the Labor Party of Belgium, a communist-inspired formation, pointed to 20% of intentions of voting. “It would not surprise me if this message from the Belfius management committee comes from a Dutch-speaking source”, annoys Adrien Dolimont, the liberal minister of budget and finance of Wallonia.
“This warning is nothing more than a salon comment made by people drinking champagne”, sweeps Elio Di Rupo, the socialist minister-president of the region. Jean-Luc Crucke, former budget minister, is more nuanced: “The financial situation in the region is serious, but not desperate”, he believes. At the end of 2021, this liberal official stressed that the sustainability of the regional debt was not “not assured”. A little later, the rating agency Moody’s lowered the Walloon credit rating, judging however that the “credibility” of regional debt remained “satisfactory”.
Bankruptcy ? The comparison with Greece makes Adrien Dolimont jump. “This country had a debt of 300% after having cut its expenses, its accounts were not legible and, unlike Wallonia, its debt was not financed at a fixed rate”, he argues. This last point is important, confirms Giuseppe Pagano, professor emeritus at the University of Mons, specialist in public finances, for whom “we can speak of a worrying situation, but not dramatic, in particular because 93% of the regional debt is effectively at a fixed rate”.
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