29 november 2020
08:15
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According to the Brussels Prime Minister Rudi Vervoort (PS), the Belgian consultation model is getting off the rails. He is not the only one who is concerned.
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Those who passed along the Brussels ring road years ago could see them near Vorst, Anderlecht and Jette: the allotment gardens. Brussels mansard farmers grew their own lettuce or radishes there and the more advanced sometimes a cauliflower, string beans or even strawberries. The gardens have disappeared over the years. They have made way for business parks, shopping centers and residential blocks.
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Alain Maron (Ecolo), the Brussels Minister of Environment, Climate, Social Integration, Health, Energy, Cleanliness and the Port of Brussels, must be concerned about the food supply of the metropolitan area. Earlier this week, he unfolded the plan to buy agricultural land in Walloon and Flemish Brabant. These fields were intended to be made available to farmers who grow wheat, vegetables and fruit for the people of Brussels. The minister has already set aside 15,000 euros for the purchase of agricultural land in Flemish Brabant. According to the agricultural land prices there, that is just enough for some of those plots that the mansard farmers used to work.
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Maron, who has an almost 50-strong cabinet at his disposal, is an enthusiastic politician who puts on his fluorescent jacket every morning and paddles to his cabinet on his folding bike. On another detour, he should definitely visit Mabru, the Brussels early market near the canal. They lie there every day before dawn: the regional products next to the imported offer. Merchants and even star chefs come to supply themselves. During the covid lockdown, there was no shortage on Mabru, but rather a problem of surpluses due to stalled exports. So, Minister Maron and the Brussels government need not worry: the early market will continue to supply the city.
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Incidentally, there is no threat of food shortage in the world, once assured Guillaume Bastiaens, former CEO of the American agro giant Cargill. Modern agriculture is an unlikely success story. Since 1950, the grain yield per hectare has increased tenfold. A century ago, more than half of the world’s population was undernourished, today barely 11 percent. If there was a problem at all, it would be the supply of megalopolises like Lagos in Nigeria, Cairo in Egypt or Dhaka in Bangladesh. Brussels is far from belonging to that category.
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1,000 billion
The actions of Maron, who had already apologized for his rashness, confirms what the French publicist Régis Debray recently described as ‘the pessimistic message of ecology that wants to return society to a world that no longer exists’. And that message from the green fine preachers stifles the debate about climate and nuclear exit.
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The message of the green fine preachers stifles the debate about the climate and the nuclear exit.
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No one in common sense opposes the use of renewable energy. But that comes at a price. ULB professor Samuel Furfari, a prominent voice on the energy issue, recently pointed out in L’Echo that, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), as many as 2,600 billion were spent worldwide between 2010 and 2018 to promote renewable energy. According to the professor, the EU has spent more than 1,000 billion euros with the same goal since 2000. The result remains modest. The share of renewable energy in European energy consumption is 18.9 percent. But it also contains biomass, which is mainly available in northern wooded countries. The share of wind turbines and solar panels in European energy consumption is slightly less than 3 percent.
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Juggling with numbers, often limited only to electricity consumption, disrupts the debate. Also about the cost of the European Green Deal program, which, starting from this low level, aims to achieve full climate neutrality by 2050 with an additional investment of 1,000 billion euros. The latter is unbelievable, according to Furfari, given the 1,000 billion that have been spent since 2000 on barely 20 percent renewable energy.
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Now they want to use the same amount to make the remaining 80 percent of energy consumption climate neutral. There is no answer to that comment. Furfari already predicts that the sellers of yellow vests will do golden business if the tax consequences of that chaotic policy are reflected on the assessment letters. And the consequences of the nuclear exit also affect the regions, which are currently very quiet in the discussion.
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Community resentment
For the time being, everything is still being drowned out by the covid crisis, by the discussions about the Christmas bubbles and shopping behavior, and about the vaccines that must be distributed soon and the distribution of the vaccinations, but also about whether they are now reliable. As political mansard farmers, the federal and regional governments are each shoveling their own plot of land. But the traditional contradictions will soon be on the table again and the welds of the Belgian construction threaten to come loose.
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The traditional contradictions will soon be on the table again and the welds of the Belgian construction are in danger of becoming loose.
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And there is not only the nuclear exit. Earlier this week, there was already a cry for help from Brussels Prime Minister Rudi Vervoort (PS) about the Belgian consultation model that is getting off the rails. Nothing works anymore, he says in Le Soir. Whether it concerns the city toll and the kilometer charge that the Brussels Region wants to levy to prevent commuters from car traffic, or about the asylum seekers and transmigrants who wander aimlessly through the streets, about the shopping center on the Heysel, the consultations keep on stagnating, both with the federal and with the Flemish and Walloon governments.
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Some Brussels municipalities are gradually offering the appearance of Bucharest under Ceausescu and are surviving budgetary thanks to the Capital Region. In both the Brussels and the Walloon government, the PS’ers are annoyed by the Ecolo ministers who have to report back to their party authorities for every decision. Meanwhile, the exploding debt of the French Community is being looked helplessly. This will undoubtedly double in the next five years and thus increase the Belgian public debt in the statement of Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU.
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In the federal government, resentment is rising from some French-speaking coalition partners, especially the liberal MR. Middle class minister David Clarinval has already complained about the know-how of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health Frank Vandenbroucke (sp.a). This is an annoyance that is also growing among the Walloon government, and among Francophone scientists who have the unpleasant feeling that the Flemish experts are given priority during the consultations about the covid crisis. While it is delicately pointed out that the current approach is not much better than that under the government of Sophie Wilmès (MR). In the tables of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Belgium ranks at the very top of the world rankings with the highest death rate.
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Much needs to be done to make the covid disease forget. Unfortunately, the problems at hand and the derailed budget and public debt leave no room. Vervoort no longer has faith in it: ‘Election after election, things are getting more and more complicated politically. Two options remain: whether we wait, as with Russian roulette, until the N-VA enters into coalition with Vlaams Belang in 2024. Or we are already thinking about a new institutional model. This permanent crisis cannot be sustained. ‘ Vervoort’s great fear is that the accumulated discontent will roll into the street, whether or not wrapped in yellow vests. The winding down of the Covid crisis will be a very delicate undertaking.
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