In November 2020, Stéphane Roberti, then mayor of Forest, retired from active political life. A few months later, he filed a first medical certificate. Others will follow. Allowing him, as required by the New Municipal Law, to continue to receive the mayor’s salary.
This situation highlighted the inconsistency of the current system where an ill mayor receives his full salary and the acting mayor continues to receive his salary as an alderman. The commissioner who in turn replaces the commissioner is also not entitled to a salary, and this as long as the commissioner himself is not entitled to the salary of mayor.
“Currently the sick mayor receives his salary for an indefinite period, while his replacement, who actually performs the function, does not. It is time to change an old provision and create a balanced framework which provides for the replacement of the mayor who has been ill for a long time after three months”, concludes Bernard Clerfayt, minister for local authorities in Brussels.
This cascading discrimination, unprecedented in the Brussels Region, has prompted the Brussels executive to review the legislation in force regarding the impediments or absence of local leaders.
Change in the air
If currently a sick mayor can continue to receive salary indefinitely, this will soon no longer be the case. The draft ordinance aims to limit the mayor’s salary under a medical certificate to three months.
In other words, the mayor whose absence is covered by a medical certificate will receive a salary for a maximum of three months. Then the agent falls under the social security system applicable to him. At the end of the uninterrupted period of three months, the acting mayor will receive the salary linked to the function.
In Wallonia two salaries are paid (to the sick mayor and his substitute) while in Flanders, from the first day of illness, the representative no longer receives anything.
