750 million euros over five years. The government pays that to Bpost to deliver the newspaper (and weekly newspapers) every morning to those who have a subscription. A large amount that the government pays in customer benefits for certain companies. Something you won’t read much about in the favored papers.
Of course
The amount became known through a question from MP Michael Freilich (N-VA). He was given the table with the amounts. Those amounts had been made a kind of state secret by previous governments. Releasing those amounts could be a competitive disadvantage for the postal service, it was said at the time. That has changed anyway.
https://twitter.com/MichaelFreilich/status/1451206876260098059
In the table you see the amounts for this year and next: 178 million and that gradually decreases to 137.5 million in 2027. Apparently this government has no real budget deficit. There are still favors for private companies.
Green?
The decision to extend that Bpost contract for paper newspaper and magazine distribution is remarkable. This week Bert Bultinck made Knack object to the driving cars for parcels. And Minister Petra De Sutter (Green), who is also responsible for the post, wants to reconsider parcel delivery for environmental reasons. We have to do the last half kilometer ourselves.
Precisely those stakeholders and ministers then decide to subsidize the hundreds of cars that drive around every day to bus paper media. Do you understand? It’s inconsistent to say the least.
Lobbying power
The lobbying power of the major media groups is not unimportant in this regard. The last one to upset the politicians are the few, and large, media groups out there. DPG, Mediahuis and Roularta in Flanders, for example. They win with this contract. The state pays the postage of their subscriptions.
There is also a community side to it. Just about everyone admits that the rule mainly exists to keep the French-speaking media afloat. Their impoverishment is apparently part of their lobbying there. Like anyone who is subsidized, they are convinced that they need those subsidies to survive.
Old-fashioned neutral support
The subsidies for the distribution of paper dailies and weeklies is an old form of neutral state support to the media. In the days when all media appeared on paper, it was a justifiable way to support media as neutrally as possible. News is then seen as necessary for democracy and therefore worth supporting.
Beautiful. But times change. News and certainly miscellaneous news is still necessary in a democracy. Yet the government only supports that news that is printed in daily and weekly newspapers. A monthly magazine can whistle for it. A web publication especially. An old support mechanism that has not been adapted to the times. It continues to exist because it has become an economy of its own and it benefits major players.
State aid
The 750 million is therefore a state aid to the old-fashioned paper media. Especially the large groups benefit from this. But at the same time it is also a hidden state aid to Bpost. And an employment project. That’s also one of the reasons the PS sticks to it.
There is also a community side to this. State aid to paper media would create thousands of jobs. He doesn’t want to let the PS go to waste. Given the greater distances, these are probably more French-speaking than Flemish jobs. As if those jobs would all be lost if Bpost no longer delivers newspapers.
It is also highly questionable what makes these jobs worth so much more than jobs in e-commerce. These are made virtually impossible by the same PS, while the employment potential, especially for the unskilled French-speaking unemployed in the army, is much greater. That is irrational to say the least.
To make the whole case even more perverse, the political midfield also benefits from this postal support. Trade unions and health insurance companies that send leaflets under the postal support scheme also benefit. And they also eagerly lobby to maintain the arrangement. Or what did you think?
Level playing field
Enforcing this measure is yet another policy act with which the government in Belgium and Flanders creates an uneven playing field. As a relatively small media initiative, it competes with the big ones. In the lobbying craze that is this country, those big media companies manage to turn the policy in their favor. The policy creates a Matthew effect: whoever has a lot will get a lot. Those who have little are deprived of even that.
Develop a media project in Belgium/Flanders like we do with Breakthrough you do that despite the media policy. The recovery measures that the media has launched so far are also tailored to the major players. Major players who made millions in profit during corona and do not need any recovery measures at all. Now they will strengthen their position with recovery measures. If small players later want to use tax-booted systems, they will have to pay seriously.
Criticism from the Netherlands
In fact. In the Netherlands there is strong criticism of the Belgian system of media support by post. The Flemish companies have bought up a large part of the Dutch media and the accusation is that they could only do so because of the hidden state support in Belgium.
A debate that is rarely conducted in the media. Just as media criticism is largely absent in Flanders. Let alone a media debate. The politicians like to respond to the complaints of the large groups. Who listens to the calimeros now? And what do they actually represent? It is the we-know-us world of media and politics. Each time they scratch the other’s back.
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