The MR group regrets the turn taken by parliamentary debates last Wednesday in the environment committee of the Brussels Parliament regarding the draft ordinance amending various provisions on energy, climate and waste.
While we can largely welcome the climate ambitions carried by this ordinance, it is not without real economic, social and administrative challenges for our Region, our businesses and our citizens. And we regret that measures linked to “energy sobriety” affecting the hospitality sector and Brussels businesses were included in this package, measures that could have been debated and decided later by a fully-fledged Brussels Government.
These measures had been put in place in the context of an energy crisis where energy prices had soared. Even though today we are still feeling the effects of the energy crisis, our Region unfortunately faces a significant number of bankruptcies, dissolutions and judicial reorganisation procedures. A few days ago, the president of the French-speaking Brussels commercial court sounded the alarm about the deterioration of the Brussels economic fabric. Bankruptcy figures described as “alarming”. According to him, our Region faces a 15% rise in bankruptcies in 2024 (7% nationally): “To the 1,500 bankruptcies of French-speaking Brussels businesses and 400 Dutch-speaking ones, we must add 764 dissolutions in total for the past year. If this pace continues, we will reach 1,600 in 2025.” On top of this, there were 208 judicial reorganisation procedure (JRP) files in 2024, and bank defaults are on the rise.
For our group, it is not up to a caretaker government to extend such measures.
Through MPs Aurélie Czekalski, Gaëtan Van Goidsenhoven and their group leader Clémentine Barzin, amendments were tabled to withdraw the articles relating to energy sobriety. These articles indeed sought to ban the use of outdoor heaters in the hospitality sector, to introduce an obligation to close the doors of heated shops, and to turn off the lights of establishments between 11pm and 6am.
For the MR, these amendments respected the principle of caretaker government while taking into account the needs of the hospitality and retail sectors today, hit by various crises and not needing additional constraints on top of their difficulties. This was the path of wisdom, and we regret that the parties of the outgoing majority did not engage with it constructively.
For the Brussels MR, it will be up to the next fully-fledged Government, working with the sectors concerned, to take measures that support economic activity while allowing us to meet our climate commitments, without condemning the latter.
As for the amendment tabled by ECOLO, which sought to postpone the entry into force of the ban on patio heaters to 1st June 2027, the MR questions why the signatories did not maintain it and voluntarily stuck to an entry into force on 1 January 2026.
For the MR, it was about taking into account the hospitality sector's request to postpone the new constraints without a set date. Because where will the Brussels economy stand in 1 or 2 years? Can we today be certain that the situation, after two major crises, will have fully recovered?
The MR further regrets that, as it had proposed, no measure to remove the penalties imposed under the ordinance, and no measure to ease the new constraints on the retail sector, could achieve consensus with the outgoing majority.
“The MR was strongly supported by voters last June, precisely to weigh in favour of economic activity, among other things, not the opposite, that is the difference we want to bring to Brussels,” conclude the liberal MPs.
The MR group therefore voted against the articles relating to energy sobriety in the draft ordinance and against the draft ordinance itself. Parliamentary debates will continue at the next plenary session of the Brussels Parliament.