Budget adjustment by the Walloon Government: course confirmed and tailored responses

The 2025 Walloon budget fully complied with the consolidation path set out in the 2024-2029 Government Agreement. For this adjustment work, the Walloon Government stayed the course and adopted the necessary budgetary adjustments for 2025.

Adjusted parameters

In terms of expenditure, estimates were made based on the parameters of the February 2025 Economic Budget from the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) regarding GDP growth. The growth of the consumer price index and the health index correspond to the FPB's monthly forecasts of April 2025.

According to the FPB's monthly forecasts from April, the next breach of the health index threshold is now expected in September 2025 rather than August 2025, meaning that public sector wages will be adjusted in November 2025 and social benefits in October 2025.

Structural savings are maintained

As a reminder, the method put in place by the Walloon Government is a cumulative structural effort to reduce the deficit to 1% of revenue.

For 2025, the effort made is unprecedented: €268 million. This effort is maintained following this 2025 adjustment.

The intention was not to intensify these efforts further, so as to allow the flexibility needed to respond to certain clearly identified needs for 2025. This is therefore a purely technical budget review.

Necessary adjustments

Adjustments compared to the initial 2025 budget were identified, and cross-departmental work was carried out by all Ministers across the entire budget. Certain allocations were therefore adjusted to meet new needs. This work therefore has no profound impact on ongoing projects.

Cybersecurity

Following the large-scale intrusion detected in the IT system of the Service public de Wallonie, numerous measures were taken as a matter of urgency. More broadly, in-depth work will need to be carried out to restore applications within a sound and robust IT environment.

The Walloon Government has released additional funding to protect its institutions and citizens against cyber threats.

An exceptional budget of €10 million has been released for the initial short-term work to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities.

This €10 million supplements funding already allocated to cybersecurity. Non-exhaustively, several actions, with amounts already previously entered in the budget, will be launched in the coming weeks or are already underway:

• Creation of a dedicated cybersecurity project team within SPW-MI.


• Strengthening of the SOC (Security Operations Center) to monitor the state of the regional network in real time and prevent any new attacks.


• TOP 3 agreement, which includes a specific component enabling local authorities to carry out their digital transformation and co-financing projects that strengthen digitalisation, particularly in cybersecurity. This represents €5 million from 2025.


• €700,000 for the Cyberwal umbrella body (Cyber Security for Wallonia), whose aim is to promote research, innovation and training in cybersecurity, particularly in connection with the Digital Wallonia 4 Cyber programme. Cyberwal is also a testing centre included in NATO's DIANA technology incubator initiative.


• Linked to this Cyberwal umbrella body, the “Cyberexcellence” research project, led by several universities and research centres, is funded to the tune of €26 million via the Recovery Plan. The project funds 60 researchers and enables collaboration with more than 35 companies.

The Government approved enhanced support to cope with the extra costs of building new childcare facilities.

The average cost of building a childcare place is today well above the subsidies currently provided, jeopardising the completion of numerous new childcare projects under the Plan Équilibre, which aims to create more than 3,000 places.

To support projects in the face of rising costs, the Government has decided to increase funding per place:

• Component 1 (European funding): +€5,000 per place, i.e. €51,000


• Component 2 (Walloon funding): +€10,000 per place, i.e. €51,000

Biodiversity

Biodiversity protection must be strengthened with clear-sightedness and pragmatism.

Clear-sightedness, because the priority is clear: restoring nature. Efforts will focus more on concrete actions, rather than awareness-raising alone. And above all, all the funds released will be fully deployed, unlike in previous years.

Pragmatism, because we are giving the administration and the Department of Nature and Forests the means to fully carry out their missions and strengthen habitat restoration.

The administration is once again becoming the central actor, supported by associations whose missions will be refocused.

An increase of nearly €5 million has been released for biodiversity protection.

Summary table