This Sunday 1 September in Ciney, the MR President officially launched the municipal campaign with an inspiring speech that brought together and motivated all our members and supporters. In his address, he stressed the importance of our local commitment and the need to defend our values of freedom, responsibility and innovation for the well-being of all citizens.
We are proud to announce that our programme was approved unanimously, demonstrating the unity and determination of our team to face the challenges ahead. This ambitious and realistic programme, built around concrete proposals, reflects our will to work for dynamic municipalities and cities looking to the future.
Discover the full speech by the President:
Thank you very much, thank you for being so numerous at this first great congress since our victory last June.
We also had the chance to meet at a participation congress where you were also extremely numerous.
On this occasion, we have set up the country's first governments, since the Walloon Government and that of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation are already up and running.
You were able to hear Adrien Delimont, the youngest Minister-President in Wallonia's history, share a course of action that has already been implemented by the various ministers of this government. I'll come back to that later in the speech.
But as you know, no sooner is one campaign over than another one is upon us.
And it's going to be a sprint.
There's a month and a half left before the municipal elections.
Now, these municipal elections can be seen in two ways.
Either you see them from the perspective of your municipality, with your local realities.
And it's true that this is one of the dimensions of the municipal campaign. But this year, the municipal elections also have a very different role. It is the role of ensuring coherence.
Coherence between the will for change and the reforms we will implement in Wallonia and Brussels.
And the ability for these reforms to percolate down to the ground, for these reforms to be felt in everyday life.
Because yes, our country is structured in such a way that all powers regulated at the higher level of government find their application in the municipalities.
That is why our municipal representatives are at the heart of this party.
They are the ones who, on the ground, explain our policies, implement them, and sometimes also adjust them according to certain local realities.
That is why, if we want to put back to work, and give back freedom and dignity to men and women who are currently inactive, we will need to rely on better-structured CPAS than in quite a few socialist-run municipalities.
We will need to rely on police zones to guarantee everyone's safety, but above all on a municipal authority that implements administrative sanctions and enforces the law in all its applications.
If we want administrative simplification to be more than just the result of a few decrees,
but is actually experienced day to day by our fellow citizens, municipal administrations need to be open on Saturdays.
They need to adapt their opening hours to men and women who work.
If we want our major principles of change, good governance and budgetary management to be applied,
we absolutely must deal with the financial burdens that today weigh down the big cities of Wallonia and quite a few Brussels municipalities.
You've understood, ladies and gentlemen, as I told you, an electoral victory is not a gift, it is a responsibility.
But if we want to have the full means to carry out this responsibility, we must finish the job.
And finishing the job means taking control of the big cities, joining the local councils everywhere we are not yet present, making sure that the Mouvement Réformateur remains the party with the most local representatives, since we have mayors today.
it means making sure that the Mouvement Réformateur proves, in the municipal elections, that it is a great popular movement!
That is why, beyond the work you do in your municipalities to roll out programmes best suited to the concerns of our fellow citizens, we have adopted a general programme.
The one that precisely links the federal and regional level of government with your towns and municipalities.
Today, this morning, it falls to me to have this programme voted on.
It is the result of dozens upon dozens of hours of work by our staff and local representatives.
A few weeks ago you had the chance to still amend the text, and this morning, through the various workshops, to hear the main thrust and direction of this programme, which, if summed up in three points, would start with the activation of the economically inactive,
the guarantee of security, which is fundamental to ensuring harmonious coexistence, and also good governance.
No more cronyism, no more politics of small favours.
We are going to make things objective, we are going to manage properly, we are finally going to take care of your money, that is, public finances.
As I announced, we are now going to vote. You have received small flags.
So on the question I'm going to ask you, if you agree with it, you raise them.
If you disagree, you do nothing.
Who is opposed? I did say, who is opposed?
You should always do the hardest part first. The rest is always more pleasant.
Who is opposed to the general municipal programme of the Mouvement Réformateur?
Zero opposition.
Who abstains? No abstentions.
Who approves the general municipal programme of the Mouvement Réformateur?
I have the pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to officially announce that we are in the municipal campaign!
Thank you, thank you for your trust in the work, as I said, of our staff, of our elected representatives.
And now, to work, to finish the job, as I have indicated, because you have seen it, with the end of summer comes not autumn, but the season of lies and caricatures.
I have seen, in recent days, the left coming back into the media, explaining all sorts of things to us.
For example, the issue of the Liège tram. The Walloon Government supposedly is an anti-big-city government.
Worse still, allegedly an anti-Liège government.
Which government?
Unless one thinks the previous governments foolish enough to snub Liège and Charleroi, the two major cities of Wallonia. And this is coming from someone from Mons.
Today, the redeployment of Wallonia will happen through the redeployment of Liège and Charleroi.
There is no doubt about that.
But it is precisely because we love Liège, because we deeply love Liège and Wallonia,
that we put an end to these extensions. Did you know, ladies and gentlemen, that every kilometre of these extensions would have cost you 70 million euros? 70 million euros per kilometre.
Is there still a bit of reason left?
Is there still a bit of rationality left?
In a sentence that has apparently become famous, and I hope I haven't shocked any poet, whom I like very much, because for the pleasures of life, it is better to be with a poet than an engineer.
Now I've turned everyone else against me.
But when I said we would manage things like engineers, that's the example.
What did Adrien Dolimont's government do?
The government first went to see the transport regulatory body, the AOT, which had not been consulted by the previous government.
So we have a body that is supposed to give advice on the best mobility policies to pursue for Wallonia.
This body was unknown under the previous government, where the portfolio was managed by the ecologists.
We carried out a budgetary analysis.
Because yes, political responsibility does not mean always saying yes.
Real political responsibility is being able to say no and explain why.
We carried out a territorial development analysis.
We analysed which means of transport would be most effective in bringing the greatest number of people to work in the morning.
And at the end of that analysis? It turned out that a bus system was far more efficient.
Faced with that, we had an alternative.
Either we did politics as before.
That was announced, you have no idea.
That was said.
And then, we've been waiting for this for so long.
Or take responsibility, explain, accept that not everyone will be happy, but finally do politics, that is, think about the common good.
Because I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the extension of the Liège tram is like the Mons railway station.
These are not mobility projects, don't be mistaken.
It is in fact a policy pursued by the Parti Socialiste, which emptied these cities' coffers in order to go and seek subsidies from other levels of government, so as to be able to tell fellow citizens, “Look, something is happening.”
That is not our conception of things.
Our conception of things is that the political means used must genuinely serve the people.
That it is not right to keep having public works, like the Mons station, running over budget by millions of euros, without anyone being held responsible.
Because being a liberal means being the guarantor of good management and transparency.
Today, if a cashier is a few euros short in her till at the end of the day, she risks being fired.
In our country, when you hold the highest political or administrative positions, you can let millions slip away without anyone holding you to account.
That is unacceptable.
That is why, together with Benoît Piedboeuf, group leader in the federal Parliament, we will call for the opening of a parliamentary inquiry.
Because that too is liberal management. It is management where everyone takes responsibility.
So, in the season of lies,
we also had to deal with certain teachers' unions.
Just imagine.
We are supposedly precarising education.
Let me explain the journey of Aude, a teacher I know.
Aude has been waiting 15 years for a permanent appointment. 15 years!
For 15 years she has not been able to buy a house.
No bank will trust someone who has monthly contracts, or a one-year contract at best.
For 15 years she has been hoping for the Holy Grail, going to see politicians.
I won't say which type of education network she works in, but let's say it is run by a political authority.
Who is going to open up permanent appointments this month?
It's actually a real shame that we only vote every 6 years, because when I see how much work we do in Mons, how many appointments and security decisions we make, I think we should really vote every year.
More seriously, what we want to offer teachers,
is security.
And security means telling them that from their first day of work, they will have a permanent contract.
They will benefit from job security.
They will no longer have to worry about tomorrow.
and they will simply receive, from the political authority, the respect, and I will come back to this notion, the minimum respect we owe to the men and women who work for future generations.
As I said, through these two examples,
we are going to bring back not austerity, but simply management, real management.
No more of the “waffle-iron” politics.
I give a subsidy to Charleroi, so I must give one to Liège too. Don't forget Mons.
I give it to the MR, so I must give it to Ecolo and the PS too.
That is over.
We don't have the money.
That is not a dignified way of doing things.
I hear today the criticism from the Parti Socialiste.
I would like to give them a message.
I would like to call on them to show some humility.
The humility to recognise that the task ahead of us is enormous, because we have to clean out the stables they left us.
Recognising that we now bear a major responsibility
It is about restoring our fellow citizens' trust in the idea that politics can really change things.
And above all, restore a notion that has been so misused and forgotten over the last 40 years: the notion of respect.
We will give respect back to citizens and taxpayers by lowering taxes.
We will give respect back by paying work better than inactivity.
We will give respect back to teachers by reaffirming, as Valéry Glatini pointed out, the authority of school leadership over teachers.
We will give respect back to farmers, because together with Anne-Catherine we will fight against pointless legislation, against red tape, and ensure common sense takes its place again.
We will also give respect back to citizens,
by ensuring that they no longer have to adapt to the administration, but that the administration adapts to them.
We will ensure that public service, together with Jacqueline, once again becomes a service to the public.
We will make sure, together with Cécile, together with Adrien,
Together with all our teams, we will ensure that respect is given back to economic development.
And yes, ladies and gentlemen, we will fight against certain forms of conservatism.
We will make decisions that no one has dared to make in the last 40 years.
And we will do this for one simple, good reason.
It is because we love Wallonia.
It is because in a few weeks we will be able to do this in Brussels.
Because we love our capital region.
And above all, because the Mouvement Réformateur is not concerned with the next elections, but is making a commitment today to future generations.
To achieve this, we will need partners.
Beyond our government partner, Les Engagés led by Maxime Prévost, we will need to work with all actors in society: business leaders, workers, administrations, but also the trade unions.
And today I would like to address them.
The choice that trade unions face today, particularly those claiming allegiance to socialism,
is very simple.
Either they decide to play the third round of the elections.
Being in the pay of a PS with a disastrous record, no ideas for the future, and evidently lies as its political programme.
Or the trade unions, in which I, as a liberal, believe strongly.
Because I believe that in a liberal society, we need collective mobilisation.
We need a counterbalance to power.
We need that force which does, and can, move society forward.
And so I would like to say this today to all trade unionists.
I have enormous respect for that commitment.
I even think that in another life, I could have been one of them.
Like them, I detest injustice.
But the greatest injustice would be to serve a political party instead of serving our citizens.
So today these unions have a simple choice, particularly for example in education, employment, and public administration.
Are you ready today to embrace modernity?
Are you ready to carry out the reforms your reference parties never dared to make?
Or do you want to remain in the nineteenth century?
Today I am extending a hand to the social partners and telling them one thing.
We will consult, we will respect, we ask you to be constructive, but in the end political power must also be able to make itself heard, must be able to command respect,
And everyone must respect the mandate given by the voters last June.
Now, among the actors we will need to work with are, as I said at the start, the cities and municipalities.
And I would like today to salute the president of the Parti Socialiste, who gave an excellent interview a few days ago.
He said: “Charleroi cannot have a part-time mayor.”
I say to him: “But Paul, then why were you a quarter-time mayor for twelve years?”
The result of this lack of involvement in cities and municipalities can be seen today in a statistic.
Because many tell me, but Georges Louis, you criticise the left too much, these are caricatures of populism.
Well, I have already told you that we would govern like engineers.
And so an engineer or a doctor, when faced with a problem, tries to objectify the diagnosis.
I went and looked up the statistics.
The statistics, for example on the IWEPS website, the statistical institute of Wallonia.
I went to look at the FPS Economy.
I went to look at the reports of the federal police.
If you take all these objective reports together, you will see something quite dramatic.
It is that all the major cities of Wallonia governed by the Parti Socialiste are among the top, where sometimes, if you're lucky…
Among the top 10 municipalities with the fewest people working, the highest crime rates, and the most dramatic budget levels.
Imagine, I come from a city where debt increased by 214% during this term, where interest rates increased by 290%.
We spend nearly 10% of our municipal budget every year repaying debt interest.
That is objectivity.
So I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but today, at the risk of sounding harsh, when I read these statistics, two things come to mind.
The first is that, apparently, voting PS makes you poor.
And the second, ladies and gentlemen, is that it is high time the liberals took back control of the major cities of Wallonia and Brussels!
I spoke about the major cities because this will obviously be a strong objective of the Mouvement Réformateur.
But we should not forget that we are also today the party of rural areas.
That we are the party with the most mayors in French-speaking Belgium, 104.
And that we have a duty to keep deepening our local roots.
And what I observe is that wherever the mayor is liberal, he is re-elected, and his score keeps rising.
We are often told that trees don't grow to the sky.
It depends.
I see that in some municipalities, we saw it in Nus for example, I know the one in Jurbise, there are many others, I could not name all 104.
Well, from one election to the next, it keeps progressing.
And do you know why it keeps progressing?
Because the liberal recipe is to pursue concrete policies serving working women and men, with longer childcare hours at schools, with administrations open later in the evenings and at weekends, with police that guarantee everyone's safety.
I wanted to say to our elected representatives and our candidates in rural municipalities
that they are the foundation of the Mouvement Réformateur.
The strength of a party for the future is determined by its base.
That base is what we have in the local branches.
That base is the activists.
That base is our municipal councillors.
That base is you, today.
So if you want the Mouvement Réformateur to remain the leading French-speaking political force, if you also want, in your municipalities, to stop the scattering of subsidies and restore municipal autonomy, that is why we will overhaul the way municipalities in Wallonia are funded.
If you want to put an end to these calls for projects meant to prove to your fellow citizens that we will stop building 500 metres of cycle path in the middle of a field, and instead finally use their money for their real needs with concrete efficiency, ladies and gentlemen, be more determined than ever to hit the campaign trail!
I won't take too long, but before we part, I would like to talk about another level of power.
That is the provinces.
I have talked a lot about municipalities, we have talked a lot about cities and municipalities.
But I would like to talk about the provinces.
We have decided in the regional policy agreement that these would be the last provincial elections.
That is why these elections are extremely important and decisive.
Because our aim is to reduce the volume of political staff, but certainly not to undermine the service.
The women and men on the provincial lists will have an extremely important, historic task.
They will have to…
Support the staff, preserve the service, put an end to waste, return to sound management principles.
They will have to be real managers.
They will have to be managers who, within six years, completely transform the tool so that all public resources are fully directed towards our fellow citizens.
But I would also like to address the civil servants,
the provincial civil servants of course, but also municipal, regional, and Wallonia-Brussels Federation and federal civil servants.
I want to tell them that, even though some of their unions try to stir them up, they should not be afraid.
We have deep respect for the public service.
Because we, as liberals, know that the State should not deal with everything,
but must properly handle the things it does take on, in order to guarantee everyone's freedom, the freedom to do business, the freedom to move around, and to enable the women and men of our country to have real equality of opportunity.
We need a state structure that is strong and efficient.
So I would like to tell provincial civil servants that they have nothing to fear for their jobs.
On the contrary, the freed-up resources are aimed at strengthening service to the public.
And I want to tell all other civil servants, at every other level of power, that we see them as partners, that we want to reduce the size of ministerial cabinets because we want to work much faster and much more directly with the public service.
And finally, I would just like to say one thing to them: thank you.
Because in our country there are still many reforms to carry out.
There is poor public governance that is widespread.
But we can also rely on quality public services.
We can also rely on thousands of women and men who, every day, provide services to our population and make Belgium, even today, one of the best countries in the world to live in.
Thank you to the women and men of the public service!
It is very hot, the Berber tents are waiting for you outside, but I suspect it's really the drinks under the tents you are waiting for.
But I would just like to tell you one more thing.
What we are experiencing today, we will do everything to try to experience it again and make it a habit.
But at this stage, what we are experiencing is exceptional.
we have an immense window of opportunity opening up before us.
Namely, to finally implement the reforms we have been championing for 40 years.
This window of opportunity was opened by the result of the elections on 9 June.
Today it is up to our 6,000 municipal candidates to ensure that this window opens completely.
Because today, ladies and gentlemen, I dare to tell you
that we are more than a political party.
We must be more than a political party.
We must be the embodiment of change.
We must be the embodiment of the prosperity of Brussels, Wallonia and the country.
We must be the embodiment of freedom, equality of opportunity and wellbeing for our fellow citizens.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have talked enough.
We have a month and a half left to ensure that the next five to six years are the years that see the emergence of a liberal project for French-speaking Belgium, that see the emergence of a recovery for our regions, that see the emergence
of a different future for the women and men who live there.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know you already gave an enormous amount last June, but I also know that victory is invigorating, that you want to taste again what you felt on 9 June.
So if you want to drink that same nectar again, and drink whatever you like…
On 13 October, there is only one solution left.
Go out onto the ground.
Shake hands.
Explain the project.
Not be intimidated by lies.
I know it is tough on the ground, that aggression among some has increased even further.
Do not let yourselves be intimidated.
Today, the people of Wallonia and Brussels have shown that they want change.
That change, we will embody it.
For this change to be complete and total, it requires that you do not stop for a single second until next October.
Be proud to be liberals.
Be certain that with the Mouvement Réformateur, the future is brightening for our municipalities, our towns, Wallonia, Brussels and Belgium.